Greed: Redux
by Vanya-Deyja
Summary: Complete rewrite of old fic. 2 Part. YY/Y. The gods are dangerously playing fix up after the Ceremonial Duel. Whatever Yami wants, needs, might just make Yugi lose his mind. After a failure to communicate it's season zero all over again.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** Oh my god, okay, first off let's just say it took me weeks to write this little Easter egg! Those of you who've been watching me for a while or who have read any of my old stuff might recognise this. It's a complete rewrite (a 50 page rewrite at that) of an old one shot called _Greed_. If you haven't read it you might not want to spoil things for yourself (besides this is much less cringe worthy quality hopefully).

**Part:** 1/2  
**Warnings:** it's a bit psychological, bit dark, smidge violent, nasty and dubious. On the plus side there's a _21 page lemon _(yikes!) which is possibly my personal favourite in my current body of work.

* * *

Yugi missed the weight of the puzzle tugging down like a noose round his neck. He even missed it bumping into him when he slept too tired from some glorious final battle or some other, more mundane, test to remember to slip it off before he hit the mattress. You'd think something that big would be hard to miss, hard to forget, but it must've been shadow magic that kept the puzzle surprisingly light and docile round him. Like his watch most of the time Yugi forgot it was even there when he was busy but felt acutely lost without it when it was gone.

It bruised him a little at first, lugging it around when he was sixteen and clueless that the primordially jumbled soul of an ancient powerhouse Pharaoh was lurking within it and possessing him at convenient intervals. He hadn't paid it much undue attention at the time but after the aptly named _Spirit of the Puzzle_ had disposed of Ushio and taken control of Yugi's body for the first time those bruises vanished. Carrying the puzzle, wearing the puzzle, had never damaged him since. No bruises, no aches, even after sleeping half on it all night. Though, actually, that was half a white lie. The puzzle had hurt him once since the first Penalty Game when, escaping a burning building, Yugi had scarred his hands on almost molten gold attempting to rescue the Pharaoh. If it hadn't been for Jonouchi and Honda…

Yugi let that thought slip, drift, away because nothing had happened. There were thousands of times he might've lost his life between sixteen and eighteen but nothing worth dredging up now.

He rolled onto his back, stretching his arms above his head over the pillow and letting them slump as he curled his toes out. Muscles realigned he felt a little less cramped and continued the tangent. He did miss the Puzzle's weight. Missed the promise of never having a nightmare, yeah you heard him right, that was another advantage of a Sennen Item: no nightmares. _Ever._ Actually, misnomer there, only _Yugi's_ Sennen Item was a cure all for bad dreams. Ryou swore he'd had them almost continuously when the Spirit of the Ring had kept him half blacked out of his own life for two years. Yugi on the other hand? None. In the same way the Pharaoh had kept him guarded from every bully, every emotional rough spot, every big bad, the Pharaoh had ensured through the mind link Yugi never had a bad night's sleep so long as he was watching over them. It was one of those additives, an extra-curricular protection, that was unnecessary and which the Pharaoh refused to talk about, embarrassed, but insisted on doing.

Yugi missed the gold, missed the warmth, the weight of the Puzzle which had waited five thousand and eight years for him to piece it together. The ceremonial duel had been exhausting and now all Yugi had to show for it was the gold box the puzzle had rested in, his deck and finals to tie off his high-schooling.

Footsteps padded, barefoot, down the doughy carpeted hallway and Yugi rued a little. He must've been thinking too loudly. That was always a risk here in the Kame Game Shop, it had been since he was sixteen, Grandpa would sleep through almost any noise but if Yugi didn't hush his thoughts and keep them mellow and simple well…

Yugi raised his head off the pillow, no point pretending to be asleep, and watched, quirking his knee up under the blanket, as the door split open and ever so politely quiet Yami shuffled in.

_You okay?_ Yami always got to asking that first. He was quick on that trigger and Yugi nodded dully as the thought wafted through what was, somehow, left of the mind link.

Yami didn't like actually speaking to Yugi if he could avoid it however odd or inconsiderate watching eyes found the privacy of their conversation. Jou forgave them, Anzu found it mildly frustrating when one or the other would laugh without verbal cue and Yugi had taken to answering the Pharaoh aloud in public even if the Pharaoh was reluctant to ask aloud. At night like this Yami's pretence was not disturbing his Grandfather but that was a thin ruse if ever Yugi spotted one.

_You? _Yugi supposed.

_Just fine_, Pharaoh promised, _can I stay here?_

There was a contradiction but Yugi would allow it. He was too tired and there was some harmless pleasures to be found in not arguing. Yami would never admit to needing help, never admit to Yugi anything was ever wrong, half because he was a king of Egypt and half because Yugi represented an almost sacred commodity to protect. For how much longer that ridiculousness would subsist Yugi wasn't sure now that Pharaoh had a body of his own and a new forked path into the future to trace alone.

Yugi consented over the mind link, not really with a yes but some un-worded affirmative that Yami gobbled up to permit himself to creep closer. Yugi shuffled till his back hit the wall and Yami sunk under the blankets to grab, wrap and hold him. The bed was tiny still. Yugi needed to rearrange the furniture before he got a bigger one but it didn't seem necessary to him as of yet. Yami for his part seemed to use it as an excuse to sequester Yugi in his arms for a few hours of privacy.

Pharaoh had a bed, a better sized one at that, in what used to be Yugi's parents' room but apparently having his own chambers was somehow too… _something_ for the spirit to bear for long. Yugi supposed he was more accustomed to sleeping with Yugi nearby, sleeping in Yugi's room, than any other since Egypt and while they were both adjusting to this bizarre shift of reality it seemed appropriate to let Yami intrude on his personal space.

How on Earth had they secured Yami a body? He pondered a little too hard.

_Never mind right now_, Yami ordered drawing circles between his shoulder blades, _it's too complicated to bother with_.

Yugi still had to catch himself sometimes. If he thought a little too lazily, a little too outside his box, then Yami heard very clearly. That aside this weird physical reality had been an unexpected side effect of the ceremonial duel. It had been a third option out offered in the final moments.

The general consensus between the humans and the gods that day seemed to be that Yami had died too young and had done more than his due for a little bit of vacation time. Yami had seemed to quite like the idea, rather exuberant, but he and Yugi had exchanged, for a second, that knowingly confounded look of pondering why and how the gods would let them get away with it. Jou, Anzu, Honda, and the others might not know like they did but Yami and Yugi understood the contradiction there. Yami _was_ Yugi or Yugi's past life more accurately so technically speaking he _was_ living out a new life as Yugi and the ceremonial duel _should_ have only served to retire what was the Pharaoh to the afterlife and free if from confinement in the puzzle. There was something wrong about twisting magic that far back to reward them.

Yami knew why, Yugi knew why, they'd gotten away with it but it wasn't worth talking about with anyone else or with each other in great detail. The gods were playing fix up. Yami and Yugi, by sharing as two separate entities, had become two separate entities. They'd split the soul effectively half with shadow magic and half with the thoughts of their own lived experience. You couldn't sew Yugi as exactly Yami anymore. It didn't work. The distinction between them had become more extreme, like a scale, qualities jumping ship from Yami to settle forevermore with Yugi and others lightening the boy to escape back into the Pharaoh. Yami was his own person.

_What are you buzzing about so hard? _Pharaoh demanded gently, mind half prodding at Yugi's as he ran his fingers through the boy's hair and brought them both to exhale.

_Nostalgia_, Yugi answered allowing a segment of a thought out to Yami's inspection but hoarding the rest for himself. He implied it was harmless nothings and it was.

_School, tests, tomorrow_, Yami reminded, _think about them. Go to sleep Aibou_.

Yugi felt like a Siamese twin. What happened now? Now that there was no vast unknowable future that would conceivably rip them asunder forever Yugi almost missed it. He wasn't sure what to do now. It was prickly that he couldn't, still, untangle the pair of them quite right and get off on his own. He had loved the thrill of adventure that all this had brought with it but now that the adventure was gone and they were, like story book heroes, living out the _years_ of simplicity off the page after the big Happily-Ever-After he felt a little trapped. Yugi was almost eighteen, high school was almost done, and he was chomping at the bit for that burning independence Yami had taught him and was now subverting by clinging.

He had needed the Pharaoh desperately but now, however ungrateful it was, it felt like the Pharaoh needed Yugi far more than the reverse. Like a house guest who'd stayed too long.

* * *

Yugi shuddered under the first spray of the shower mouth gaping, then lips pursing, closing his eyes as the water wiped his face and the temperature rose. Throwing himself right under the cold rather than hopping on his feet on the tiles was a thrilling minor resistance to everyday cowardice. It slapped him into consciousness in the early morning when his head was still lulling in a haze.

He spun a little, systematic in the up and down of the lotions and potions amassed on the floor of the shower. Shampoo, conditioner, shower gel… they really needed one of those hanging shelf things in here now Grandpa was getting older. Arthritis didn't appreciate the bending and crouching of the joints. Running his hands through his hair, over and over, he worked the suds out. Conditioner slickened his fingers and for a moment seemed to change the texture of his hair.

Beyond the grumbling pipes he expanded his mind outside the bathroom walls. Shadow magic was still layered in the house at the Pharaoh's insistence and through it Yugi could perceive that Grandpa was up, prepping the store, and through brushing the mind link he found Yami downstairs making breakfast.

The Pharaoh must've caught Yugi's mind brushing his curiously and flickering up from the frying pan Yami pushed back into the boy's mind in response. Yugi blocked him out, flaring back up his privacy, with utterances, un-worded mental gibberish, that explained and hopefully contented the Pharaoh that all was well. Yugi half sensed Yami chuckling and lingering on the edges of their link and for a moment wondered if it would fade.

Shadow Magic had existed and been called upon for centuries before the Sennen Items were made so really it was no surprise that even without the Items they still possessed abilities like this. Though, Yugi had to ask himself if the mind link in particular was just a stubborn piece of magic that now, without the Puzzle, would dissipate over time as they grew more apart and put more distance between each other. Surely when Yugi travelled after school, took his long planned gap year, the bond wouldn't be able to stretch that far and taunt might break.

That wouldn't be a bad thing, not entirely, but Yugi would miss it. He was semi-disposed to let whatever happened happen but his thoughts on the matter were at least mildly jumbled. He didn't know if he wanted to see into Yami's mind all the time, especially not as they got older: found girlfriends, had kids, got jobs… because he certainly didn't want to let Yami see something intimate by accident. He was growing up. Yugi wanted privacy and independence from parental influence and censorship. Surely Yami wanted it too, surely Yami wanted to be free of the hassle of monitoring him so continuously, but Yugi supposed Yami was too stubborn to withdraw until time and fate made him.

He loved the Pharaoh in that filial, strange, way he loved Jou and Grandpa and everyone else he would never let get away from him but…

Yugi felt silly. Conspiratorial and ungrateful for how stifled he was reacting under Yami's observance. It was like he was fourteen feeling trapped by an overbearing parent. Yugi had been a good teenager these past few years, hormones had been reasonable, and all their adventure had given him a healthier way to rebel against Grandpa without being a fool.

That sounded sillier actually. Spreading his wings had probably involved more danger than any other teenager in his school had dipped their toes into but Grandpa was so slack he allowed it and Yugi had never become a brat like some kids by eating up that freedom. School was harder now for it but he had been momentarily settled for it. A little… three months back and he already wanted to hop continents again… He had a gypsy in him Yugi was convinced.

He didn't understand it, really, what was irritating him or baulking him uncomfortably but something hazed him lately like an itch.

He wasn't making sense, not to himself anyway, and shaking his head back under the water to cut back his oxygen tried to wash the thought back away. School first, the guys first, and if this feeling didn't fade he'd figure it out later. He was thinking too much hazy gibberish right now.

"Breakfast?" Yami offered round his fork when Yugi skidded into the kitchen heaving his school bag.

"No thanks Pharaoh."

"_Yugi,_" he chided, leaning in his seat to grasp the boy as he tried to dart pass.

Calm, considerate, normal concern on the Pharaoh's part Yugi dismissed. It was part of his charm but Yami's hand found Yugi's wrist a little too tightly. It hurt, just for a second, and in that second Yugi was sure… there was a ripple of sensation, a stabbing feeling, at the very back of him mind that rose his hackles like looking too closely at Bakura. Had Yami been eavesdropping somehow? Yugi buried the idea. Something felt sharp in his gut.

"I don't feel like it," he insisted smooth but brisk, squeezing himself free of the gentle grip. "I'll have a big lunch. Have fun with Grandpa!"

"Bye," Pharaoh sighed, leaning back into his seat and spreading the newspaper. "Have a good day!"

* * *

Yugi adored Anzu but she could, at times, be a wet blanket. She had a very keen way of spotting when he was uneasy and pouncing upon it to try and fix the matter. Brushing her back from what he hardly understood himself wasn't easy but Yugi felt less like talking than he had expected he would when he woke this morning.

Was something wrong with Yami? Had something gone wrong when the gods had manufactured him this time? Yugi struggled with the concept. No, he told himself, the Pharaoh was clingy, cloying, it was nothing serious. Superstition pressured his throat anxiously and he had some vague suspicion that if he started looking for something to be wrong it would be. There seemed to be some unspoken spell, rule, that dictated if Yugi spoke about it then it would happen, it would be real and undeniable. It was stupidity, sure, but heavily weighted with memories of the Spirit of the Ring. Yami had never been like that, Yami would never be like that, paranoia was juxtaposing against Yugi's guilty bleeding heart for Ryou and making him anxious.

That feeling, just below the surface of the Pharaoh's mind, just submerged and waiting for Yugi's notice riled him and the bile in his stomach.

It was no surprise his shoulders sagged when the day was over.

"Yami?" He wavered by the school gate stomach dropping unhappily as he tried to work the guilty dismay out of his eyes.

"Hey Pharaoh!" Anzu quirked.

"Hi Anzu," the elder smiled diligently, flickering to Yugi. "Just thought I'd meet you to walk home. It was getting cramped in the store."

"You guys want to go out to the arcade or something?" Anzu offered friendly as ever. "Get a milkshake and hang out for a while."

"Um…" Yugi wavered. Unsure what sounded better or worse at the current moment and Yami lurched to beat him to the punch.

"No thank you Anzu." He soothed charming, polite, everything Pharaoh should have been with his soft smiles and easy stance. "I'm too lazy today. Might just take Yugi home if you two don't mind?"

"That's okay," she shrugged, "I better study anyway."

"You almost ready for America?"

"Yeah, hope so," she smiled. "Got an audition so fingers crossed."

"You'll do great," Yami assured, and lulled stiff Yugi was wondering, traitorously, at the back of his mind if Yami would've found a way to get him home even if Anzu had plans with Yugi.

It was wrong. Yugi couldn't place his discomfort but as Anzu turned between them all he could think was:_ don't leave me alone with him_.

"I'll see tomorrow Yug," she patted at him, stirring a congenial smile on his behalf because manners prompted it. She headed down the street, half spun, waved and dismissed: "have a good night guys!"

"You too!" Yugi retorted with the dull practice of familiarity.

It settled then, the unsteady, creeping, uncertainty that had been riling Yugi increasingly. He and Yami exchanged smiles, unsure what to say or how to say it and cocking his head the Pharaoh pushed them on home.

"Let me take your bag," he ordered softly, offering his hand to Yugi.

"It's okay."

"It's heavy." He insisted. "I don't mind."

"Okay," Yugi relented, he didn't want to. He wanted to be left well enough alone with his things as they walked. "We should go out with Jou and Anzu and Honda sometime soon. Maybe this weekend?"

"Not this weekend," the Pharaoh dismissed languidly, appealing. "Later."

"They miss you." He pestered. "They're going to get upset if I hog you all to myself especially because you're not fab at the whole email thing."

"I know," he sighed, "it'll be fine. I just don't feel like it right now."

"Okay," Yugi groaned weakly, frustrated. "But if Anzu gets pissed I'm telling her to lecture you."

"Why should they?" Pharaoh murmured. "It's not like I came out every other day when I was in the puzzle. Most of the time they only really talked to you, they just watched me duel, what are they missing?"

"They want to have you to themselves more." He attempted tightly. "They like you they want to be your friend as well."

"I know, I know," Yami groaned. "I will. I just don't feel like it right now. How was your day?"

"Boring," Yugi dismissed stubbornly.

"Are you alright?" The other muttered as they walked, hefting Yugi's bag on his shoulder, "what's wrong?"

"Nothing," he lied, "I'm just tired."

* * *

Yugi dug through his pockets again, rifled through the top drawer, and ran through the closet. Motion carried with it that trance like familiarity. He'd spun the room three times in as many minutes, searching and ferreting and burrowing through piles of books, loose bits of paper and heaps of clothes. He was attempting what his mother would've called '_a mummy look_' which always seemed to find one lost treasure or another in an initial sweep of any space spotting something men like Yugi and his Grandfather missed in the obvious. He had that little boy insistence that even if it wasn't anywhere he checked maybe it would be if he checked there again, maybe he hadn't moved all the clothes out of the way right, or maybe he needed to tip the drawer out.

"Yugi!" Grandpa called up the stairs. "You're going to be late!"

"_I know!"_ He sighed back loudly.

A little bit of young paranoia swept through his cockles. Even at almost eighteen Yugi had his safety blankets he just didn't think about them with incredible depth anymore. The Dark Magician was one. It seemed to drag him out on top frequently. It had history. The Pharaoh may have had it for their final duel but Yugi had sequestered it for his day to day deck. It gave him a sense of reassurance. He could be challenged for his title at any point at least having the Dark Magician on hand gave some semblance of assurance if that happened.

Yugi didn't really think much about being challenged anymore. It seemed less likely now there were no Shadow Games to use Duel Monsters for. Yet this morning, average as it was, just the absence of the Dark Magician grit his teeth at edge with soft anxiety. He'd win if someone challenged him today but he had a sense it would feel like more of a struggle if he didn't know the Dark Magician was somewhere in his deck to be drawn.

Yugi glanced at his watch, had to glance again because he wasn't paying attention the first time, and knew he'd be late. He'd have to run under the gooey sun either way now it was just a matter of how late he would be. It wouldn't matter, Grandpa was flippant, give it another half an hour and the old man would say there was no point Yugi going till after lunch or at all for the day. He may be shuffled into the game shop to guard it like a delinquent so the old man could watch documentaries but that would be about all the consequence he received.

Well that and Yami.

The Spirit had been forced to spend his days taking refuge as Grandpa's grunt in the game shop. The Pharaoh had nothing to take off with yet. The Ishtars were still forging him paperwork in Cairo to use here in Japan: birth certificate, high school diploma… people papers that tied him to the modern world and said he existed. In effect they were making papers that would convince most big bodies that Yami hadn't just wafted into being from nothing. Pegasus and Kaiba would care less if Yami had four eyes considering how badly they wanted to snatch him up after the Pharaoh had '_adjusted_' but the rest of the world would. When Yami wanted a licence, a home loan, another job they would want to know he was real. The Ishtars luckily were convenient like that. Ishizu had to fake them a family of documentation after leaving the Tomb Keepers secret society, to which they could never return, and Marik had plenty of connections for that thanks to his Rare Hunters enterprise.

Yugi had a score of convenient friends come to think of it. Most things he could want, illegal or not, he was a favour away from getting…

Either way coming back round, cyclical in thought like the eternity snake pattern Yugi had seen millions of times, to the original point Yugi would be stuck for the day with Yami. Would the Pharaoh like that? Who knew anymore? Yugi felt himself hackle deeper with his already itching unease. A month or two ago Yugi would've salivated at an excuse to steal some more time in the quiet but charming company of the embodied spirit but today playing Duel Monsters idly at the counter of the game shop seemed dangerous and foreign. He might as well have been promised to spend the day stuck on a stationary train.

Yugi would have to give up on the Dark Magician for now. His keys, which had tumbled off into nothingness as well, could be missed with less care. Yami or Grandpa would be home when he got home. He could just come in through the store rather than the backdoor. Simple. He wasn't dependent on the silverware.

Irritability decreased a little as he scrambled up the last of his things and padded, no hands, down the stairs and into the store.

"Back later guys," he dismissed nonchalantly, hurried. Now that he actually cared if he missed the morning bell by five minutes or ten he was much keener to escape the house in good time.

"Yugi," Yami drew him, and as the boy turned the Pharaoh tossed him a jingling set of keys. "You left them in the washing."

"Thanks!" Yugi darted.

Laundry? That sounded about right. Yugi could believe he'd left them in the pocket of his other set of pants but the memories of laying his keys out on his desk every night, of playing with them while he studied, made any recognition of if he had or not last night hazy.

Weirder still was the rush of distaste as Yami handed them to him. It was mundane, casual, helpful but eerily enraging to Yugi somehow. The Pharaoh as keeper of the keys, securer of the house and judge of where or when Yugi went was the frustrated, resentful, thought that trickled to mind without any obvious reason. Guilt stabbed at Yugi lightly but the resentment wouldn't fade. Little suggestions, traitorous ideas, about where his Dark Magician card had waltzed off to sprang to mind unwarranted. So what if Yami did have it? He tried to tell himself. The Pharaoh had more claim to the card than Yugi did, if he'd moved it, but still brushing logic aside the thought of having his things ruffled through without acknowledgement stirred him.

It would be a misunderstanding. Yugi would find the card when he got home. It would probably be lodged between the pages of one of the English books in his bag and flicking he'd probably find it during lunch to feel ridiculous.

* * *

He didn't find it.

He refused to get a new one. He wanted that one. Childishly naïve as it sounded, being there were thousands of prints of the Dark Magician some of them cooler, Yugi felt his couldn't be replaced with something newer and shinier. He had an invisible string to the weathered edges of that card.

"What have you lost?" Yami murmured lazily over the rim of his book, slouched in the lounge, feet crossed propped on the coffee table.

For a second they were not almost siblings. For a second they were some fifties married couple and then warping in the next second Yami was Pharaoh and Yugi was a slave, servant, sprawled on his knees reaching under the throne to grope the carpet.

Shame crept into his mind. The lock on their mind link Yugi had been unknowingly building wavered, clinking and rattling it, and sighing he tried to be understood by rushing some of the unhappiness, the concern, the guilt at having lost what was essentially a gift forfeited by the Pharaoh.

"I can't find the Dark Magician." Yugi grumbled weakly.

"When'd you see it last?"

"Sunday," he croaked, he hated Wednesdays.

"It'll turn up." Pharaoh promised nonchalantly.

There was a childish feeling of being unsupported and Yugi hissed against his own insides. There was another bud of resentment at Yami's lack of concern, at his uselessness but at once Yugi loathed himself for it given how he'd wanted freedom and independence as he still did. His insides made no sense and resecuring the mind link shut distantly, greedily needy for privacy, Yugi sighed and drifted back up the stairs.

* * *

Yugi tossed, back ached, and dragged the pillow over his head. He was lethargic, discontented and uneasy. His mind wouldn't settle clammed up by its lonesome but half unwilling and half concerned he liked the idea of letting the Pharaoh wander in unabated even less.

He didn't know if Yami was up, it must've been three am, but he didn't see any point in checking regardless.

Math test tomorrow, which he cringed at, studying meant very little when he had no natural aptitude for the subject. He could calculate life point damage with a head cold, do it in his head quick hand, but geometry and trigonometry and interest hurt his synapses. He was humanities heavy handed: history, lots of history, and social sciences and fodder like that which was less practical and wholly more high cultural arts savvy.

Was that keeping him up? The test? No that was mundane and while he struggled to look forward to that portion of tomorrow he wasn't at all afraid to face it. It was a lazy dislike. He would go, scrape a mark and then forget all about math till next week.

He was restless, unhappy, wrong inside. Something parasitic was turbulent lodged in his chest, his gut and between his temples as it stirred up turmoil. Somehow he felt trapped and worrisome for no discernible reason. He wanted to cry for an inhale, then not when he exhaled, and the scattershot of it made him wonder if he needed mood stabilizers.

Yami butted against his end of the mind link and peeking his head out from under the pillow Yugi pushed himself up in time to see the Pharaoh part the door from the frame.

"Hey," the other whispered, "can I join you?"

_No! Don't touch me!_

It was a flair of panic tightly restrained behind Yugi's mental wall at the sound of that charming baritone. Yugi tried to quell it, Pharaoh couldn't have heard it, but he couldn't place the reason for its origin. His skin crept a little and the thought remained that Yugi didn't want to be touched.

He shook his head weakly, apologetic, and sulked.

"I feel gross," Yugi tried to explain, "I'm sore."

Reasonable reasons to not want to be cramped in a single bed with two people. They needed to sleep. Yami had very little to fill his days but he was too considerate not to appreciate Yugi's schooling. Still the Pharaoh frowned, concerned or displeased? Yugi had a hard time telling with the link closed, blindsided suddenly, and sneaking closer the man waded, half kneeling, to press his palm against Yugi's forehead.

The boy pulled back. He didn't like the touch, wanted it gone immediately for some infectious fear Yugi couldn't word.

"You feel hot?" Yami asked gently, hand lowering without reaction when the boy cringed back.

"No," Yugi muttered, "my head just hurts."

"You want anything?"

"Nah I'm good," he insisted casually, "I'll feel better once I sleep. I think I'm overtired."

"Okay," Pharaoh allowed, and Yugi was grateful he didn't push. It almost made the boy want Yami back in bed with him, almost urged him to push back the covers and invite the Pharaoh there to scratch his back but the thought was crushed instantly by some unpleasant reluctance. Grateful or not Yugi didn't want Yami near him.

* * *

Yugi felt guarded. Felt watched. The atmosphere in the house had taken a tangible shift. Yami hadn't come back to his room but the parasitic thought was growing. Something was wrong. Every day he couldn't find the Dark Magician felt a little more cursed.

He'd lost his keys, again, three days on and no luck finding them. Grandpa had told him to get a new set on the weekend just in case which meant trekking down to the main street rather than lounging in his PJs on Saturday. Yugi would rather that though. The dependence of coming back after an afternoon at the arcade and being reliant on Yami to let him into his own home was packed with discontentment. Yami gave no impression of it but for some reason Yugi felt he liked it this way, that there was some unforeseen smugness in it when Pharaoh smiled to unlock the back door and asked him, oh so smoothly, where he'd been and if he'd had fun.

Yugi had been closing his door tighter. Not that the physical action could be more conclusive without slamming. More he seemed to pack some intent, some message, of '_leave me alone_' and '_don't come in'_ to the wood subconsciously. _'I want to be safe here, this is my space, leave me alone' _radiated out from him when he drew up the blankets.

His unspoken spells didn't appear to help however. Not today. Settling home after another test Yugi had the presence of infection itching at him. As he sat he was sure someone had touched his desk, sat on his bed, and intruded his nesting place while he'd been gone. Irritation scalded his skin and remaking the bed he may as well have been in London during the plague fear, anxiety, driving him obsessively to cleanse and feel sullied.

He might've stayed in his room, mentally barricading as he troweled his book but there was something on about Egypt, Amenhotep IV and Akhenaten, and that was enough to gather up the Motou family in this house. Grandpa sat back, some Santa Clause on a Hallmark card, in his arm chair with his belly puffed out after dinner and grunting gently ordered Yami to handle the remote. The Spirit had become reasonably deft with the contraption and curling his legs up under him on the couch Yugi rested his chin on his forearms across the armrest.

History documentaries were bedtime stories to Yugi. Grandpa would always get so excited by them when he'd been small. He'd prop Yugi up in his lap and the boy would be permitted to watch that for a stolen ten or fifteen minutes past his bed time. Yugi remembered vividly, fondly, asking at six '_what happened next? Was it a boy?_' when he'd been forced to nod off before the end of a Henry VIII special halfway through the retelling of Jane Seymour's pregnancy. So he was relatively at peace lulling here with the Pharaoh and Grandpa in silence.

Commercials had always been an opportunity to critique. Grandpa didn't like believing everything that was spoon fed to the masses on history, least of all Egyptian history, and with their own insider the old man was very intent on cross examining the Pharaoh about inaccuracies. Yugi snorted. How surreal could you get? A documentary about a Pharaoh, ancient, who was some great grandson to their Pharaoh…

He was soothed by normalcy. A soothing, creaming, balm had been applied to the wound and he lulled a little looser in his curl, toes brushing Yami's jean clad thigh on the other end of the couch. The Pharaoh leant back as he spoke, totally unawares and easy as his hand rested on Yugi's bare ankle.

Yugi felt good, better, happy.

They seemed in their right places again everything perfectly normal. Grandpa snorted, twitching his nose round his whiskers and as the commercial ended Yami's thumb started to run distantly back and forth over the ball of Yugi's ankle as if it were attached to some cat and barely there at all.

Yugi unwound over the next thirty minutes safe as he dazed. Barely noticeable as he stretched himself a little, careless about the hazards of touching the Pharaoh who had somehow been neutered of whatever poison had been unsettling him.

The special ended, Grandpa checked the programming, and watching one show turned, as it often did, into watching three as inertia held them all in place.

At about eleven Grandpa yawned boorishly, sniffing, and patting his armrest lumbered out of the chair.

"A cuppa and then bed I think," he decided, "night boys. Don't stay up too late."

"Night," they chorused, and the spell seemed broken.

Yugi curled his feet back in, sat up a tad, and elbow on the armrest leant his cheek into it. As Grandpa exited the darkened lounge into the foreign light of the distant kitchen Yugi had the oddest sensation of being marooned, stranded, on an island body. He was alone now in some tomb and without Yami ever looking at him, the Pharaoh's hand arms folded over his own navel, Yugi seemed to feel the other's attention return and attune its focus back upon him.

He checked the mind link was locked up tight. Inhaled and suddenly found himself searching for excuses whether to stay or go. He wasn't tired. He wanted to ask, afraid to turn his head to the Pharaoh, wanted to know and challenge him about the missing card, the missing keys even, but couldn't bring himself to admit his suspicions.

Why did this feel strange?

The most mundane thing in the world was transpiring round him but as Grandpa lumbered back up the stairs to bed Yugi felt some expectation. He felt as if he'd been left alone with _something_ to do _something_ inappropriate.

"I'm going to crash," he muttered suddenly, dragging himself out of the plush of the couch.

"Night Yugi," how did the Pharaoh make his name transform into a term of endearment?

The couch creaked, old and lumpy, and leaning with one hand resting on the backing Yugi plucked a kiss against Yami's forehead. The Pharaoh seemed to smile, to take a deep breath, as Yugi's lips touched his tender skin and Yugi instantly regretted doing it. Yugi stood, the Pharaoh's hand ran its fingers along the inside of the dangling palm by his side and squeezing it lightly Yami kissed the back of the skin.

"Sleep tight," he relented, letting go.

Yugi felt a snake coil in his stomach, a primal sense of danger, and muttering some misnomer in acknowledgement moved briskly away. He wanted distance back between them. He didn't like the sudden drop in temperature and as he mounted the stairs he seemed to catch a whiff of something rolling rotten off Yami's mind. It was a shapeless phantom thought Yugi wouldn't touch or recognise but he felt it inside the Pharaoh as they parted and it seemed to darken the entire downstairs.

When he slipped into his bedroom, he leant his back into the door, as if he might be followed and forced to open his barricade. The whole lower level of the house had a sensation to it now, where Yami lounged, that was dangerously threatening. Yugi was trepidatious to return until morning, as if pursued, and it was the same little boy feeling of there being a beast under the bed which used to make him afraid to look and now made him afraid to leave his room.

* * *

Yugi was sickened by the foul curiosity to look behind him and the nervy push to avoid it at all costs. He took up a hermitage in his room rather unthinkingly. He found the pattern he needed to eat, sleep and avoid Yami in one foul swoop.

It was cramped. The tension that told him he was safer behind his impenetrable door. The mental lock which he was enforcing was starting to give him headaches in the morning and despite his constant fiddling, checking, securing the link wasn't fading from disuse. If anything the mink link seemed to be rife with inflammation and Yugi woke to find it bruised. Perhaps the Pharaoh was trying to push on it in his sleep?

He managed a week with the throbbing migraine that came from suppressing the mind link, a week avoiding Yami's body and his mind. A week of cold turkey felt like it would kill him with the struggle but Yugi relished the freedom of it. He had to remind himself to strain with his ears, his eyes, and not his mind but with seven days down and dead, slaughtered, there were only three more weeks till the end of term. Then the Ishtars would send Yami his paper work and then Yugi would move. He couldn't be in this house.

* * *

Saturday morning, at about five thirty when the light was just tinging gold, the pressure redoubled agonisingly.

Yugi groaned, twisting onto his side in the bed, fumbling his feet onto the cool carpet. One hand grasped at the bedside desk and he shook in a breath.

He wanted to vomit, his temples pounded with a pulse that enforced the nausea and in an attempt to soothe the ache Yugi hobbled across the hall to lock himself in the bathroom. He stripped in fast business like motions, tore the tee over his head, tugged too hard at the old elastic in the pants to force them down his thighs. The world spun a little…

Ducking himself under the cold water, he inhaled, grasping the taps and felt he was in one of those dreadful alien movies getting ready to cut himself open to pull out some dark invader. Focusing he pushed the mind link down, he inhaled tightly, biting his lip. _Fuck_ it hurt.

He wanted it out of him, wanted it over, wanted to be alone and safe in his own head where he couldn't feel that mysterious belly of the beast rumbling on the other side of the string which connected him and Yami.

Yugi pressed his forehead into the wall, ground his teeth to save his lip and salvaging some strength as the cold water tensed his spine gave another mental push. He committed a cardinal sin: he tried to sever the mind link himself.

He pushed, cut, tried to rip and tug inside himself but the chain wouldn't come lose from his end or his mind. It was a fish hook his frontal lobe had grown round and, panting and whining, Yugi had to take another breath to try again to destroy it.

It was _agony_.

Marik sending pieces of his soul to the Shadow Realm hadn't hurt like this. Yugi could bear that, could bear being yanked out of his body by Dartz or mentally under assaulted by Pegasus but trying to cut the perfect chain between his mind and Yami's was blissfully tortuous.

Yugi coughed, bile rising as his body rebelled against the mental strain and unable to hold back his contorting through wrenched over the tiles and splattered himself with gobs of last night's dinner. Hissing, he gulped back in air, letting the bile burn his oesophagus. He hiccupped, turning his face up into the water as he rose the heat finally to cleanse himself.

He couldn't cut it. It wouldn't die. This parasite making him ache wouldn't come out.

There was only minor relief in acting out, in trying to sever the mind link, but the violence and the junk he'd forced out of his stomach abated the nausea and swept him cold with a moment of temporary reprise.

He felt a little lighter, a little less sick, and shaking pushed. He tried to find a reserve of strength to touch what was, inside his mind, a bleeding wound. Pus, infection, inflammation and gaping searing pain were rolling off the mind link but he could almost numb it if he didn't touch it. The pain of trying to not use it was nothing to the pain of trying to destroy it. It was like having a shattered bone under the skin of his forearm. He collected himself and pushing back a little tried to Band-Aid it.

Cauterising the mind link hadn't worked. It was worse than ever and would not dissipate. Yugi didn't know if Yami could feel it either but he was in no mood to find out. He relocked his mind, still felt the pain, but tried to ignore the break to lessen some of the agony.

He felt every bit the delinquent when he bundled himself up in the towel, still shaking, pressed his ear to the door and snuck back to his room. Clicking the door behind him he wished he had a lock.

There was a ripple in his gut, a warning, as if very shortly what he had just tried to kill would send up an alarm. He had some impression Yami would notice, the Pharaoh would wake up and know, and then Yugi would be in for some kind of hell. He moved on instinct quiet, muffled but fast. The jeans slid up his thighs like a knife through butter, softly rustling, and he grabbed the first worn tee he could lay his fingers on.

Boots came on only when he hit the side walk outside the store front, sitting in a gutter, and then Yugi started walking.

He hadn't _snuck _since before the Memory World.

Rubbing his clammy palms against the outside of his thighs he made himself put one leg in front of the other. He could still taste the sting in the back of his throat and it motivated him to move a little quicker.

* * *

Yugi must've crossed Domino by midmorning. Wiry, sharp, from the emptiness in his stomach he felt vulnerable in public. He realized, already on the street, that he'd walked so far he'd made it to Ryou's place. That quietly solemn, prim, out of the way apartment complex that sounded and felt devoid of human life on a perfectly cropped bit of land that made Yugi consider if Ryou had any neighbours at all or if the Spirit of the Ring had driven them all away.

He inhaled, puffing his chest, still sweaty from what must've been fever. His body was heating up against the infection inside his brain as part of reflex to kill whatever scum was plaguing him. He let his eyes trail up the sun hit slope of the building and instantly wanted Ryou's soothed company. Had Bakura felt like this when the Ring had tormented him? He had been paranoid and defensive and lost trying to salvage himself by lashing back at the thing squatting in his head and his body?

Yugi wanted to hide with Ryou.

The other student was a rabbit, a mouse, a squirrel and he quirked his head dumbly when he found Yugi flushed on his doorstep as if fresh from battle. Bakura was in his sagging night clothes, looking very small, and mumbling blinked.

"Yugi?" His shoulders, which had tensed, slumped with knowing intimacy but then re-bunched like rose stems pulled in. "You look horrible."

"I'm fine." He lied. He felt relief. Ryou's very presence was a cool breeze on his fevered body. "Can I hang out with you for a while?"

"Sure," the boy lilted, "I was going to have breakfast. Do you mind?"

"No," Yugi insisted, and it took mannerism, inbuilt politeness, not to lunge over the threshold when Ryou moved to make room for him.

Ryou was so like him. Yugi loved him for it. There was an understanding appreciation and Ryou was never enviable, never nasty, never jealous. Yugi felt better, felt safer, when Bakura locked the door behind them and they slumped at the breakfast table. Bakura had shadow magic of his own even now. The whole apartment felt like a show room thanks to the compulsions of his and everything was clean and disinfected of madness. The Spirit of the Ring and all its traces had been eradicated, exorcized, and Yugi's shake decreased letting his muscles unwind.

"You want some too?" The other offered at the sink, tugging up the elastic of his pants with one hand at his hip. "Just cereal sorry. I need to go grocery shopping."

"Can I please?" Yugi laughed. "That sounds good. I'm starving."

Ryou was abandoned by his parentals, his father, and Yugi had to wonder if Ryou's father wasn't just some figment or if the man had utterly forgotten the son who was now little more than a strain on his comfortable bank account. Ryou never appeared, on the smooth surface, to mind and Yugi understood the independence of being a child left to forage for yourself. He understood how it opened doors to dark, mysterious, places by providing an unsupervised opportunity. It was no surprise they both found magic.

Everything in Bakura's home felt sacredly cleansed at some marble altar. Yugi was a pilgrim submerging himself in the depths of it. The cereal was crisp, the milk was razor edge straight in its flavour, and everything was perfect. The apartment had no sentience, no corruption, and Yugi felt for the first time in days that he'd taken something good and uncontaminated into himself. The Pharaoh's aura seemed to rot his appetite and leave the meals feeling stodgy.

"You sure you're alright Yugi?" Ryou asked.

He glanced up and it was as if, sitting across from each other, Yugi and Ryou lived together. It was so un-offensive they might've done so for unmarred years. The sensation was one which carried an un-needy and comfortable ability for silence. Jou didn't like silences and Anzu was not the kind of friend Yugi felt comfortable being silent around. Only Ryou and Honda had this ease which allowed him the freedom not to have to speak at all for them to spend time.

"I'm fine." He laughed. His coils were unwinding. "I woke up really early. Do I have bags under my eyes?"

"You look like a raccoon." Ryou joked bland but sweet with his petite smiles.

"You doing much today?" Yugi supposed.

"Groceries and laziness," he shrugged.

"You want a hand?" He offered.

"That'd be nice," Ryou was always eager for company, thrilled in a totally unassuming and needless way. Bakura didn't need constant company, he enjoyed his own, but together they were easy. "You want to spend the day? We can get junk and watch a movie or something."

"That sounds awesome."

Yugi could see it. They'd go, be mundane, pick out the essentials like a married couple rather than girls for a weekend sleepover. There would be no rushing. Ryou would pluck sensibly. They'd been slow and even handed. They'd come back, prop out a few things to snack on distantly, watch bad TV aimlessly for a while and then decide they should make lunch. Yugi would cook this time, Ryou would prep, chop and grate with the sou chef grace of practice and they'd sit down and waste the rest of the waning afternoon in a soft, tender, seclusion that had no expectations.

* * *

It was perfect. Ryou's magic and Yugi's intertwined so easily Yugi felt realigned with himself after just a few short hours. The pain from the link was neutralised by the morphine haze of he and Ryou feeding into each other for a while.

They barely spoke all afternoon, rearranging themselves every hour on the couch, and Yugi threw his legs innocently over Ryou so the other could do the same without either of them needing to ask. It was magnificent. It was antiseptic, sterile, modern, chic and untouched by primal thought, ancient custom, or lurking darkness.

Every step home only coiled Yugi's gut tighter. He considered turning back, borrowing Ryou's fitting clothes and spending the night but he couldn't put the boy out. It felt inappropriate, cowardly, so he made himself walk back. Every step away, across town, had lightened him and now as he followed the setting sun made him heavier. It took an hour to get home. He'd cleared so much space and created so much distance.

The sun was a low disk in the sky, Saturday wasted pointlessly, when he found the hulking case of the Game Shop. Could he do this? The shop was closed. Entering now would just set off the bell. He'd take the long way through the back door to his room which would take him through almost every room in the tiny house. Grandpa would probably be in the lounge or in the kitchen making dinner at least.

The kitchen window was dark but he held out hope for humanity in the lounge as he drove his key into the lock delicately.

The house was empty?

So Yugi supposed anyway. There was no one in the lounge, no one in the kitchen, lights off, sunlight souring in the store front. It was deceptively peaceful.

Yugi's felt weightless, stomach flipping, as he hit the couch. Nothing hurt. Yami was too careful for that. He squirmed before he knew what had happened. The Pharaoh had one leg on the ground, his opposing knee in the small of Yugi's back, one hand held his neck down the other bent his arm behind his back.

"Get off!" Yugi hissed senselessly.

"_What did you do?_"

Pharaoh's voice was low, thick, and dangerous. He was fiercely riled, frothing at the mouth, and Yugi's instincts which should have told him to still had never been more vicious with the urge to bite and kick. The Pharaoh may have had him pinned by he'd find no submission here if that was what he was looking for.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" He seethed. "Now get off!"

Yami's mind tried to rake against his unable to do anything but brush the wall. Regardless the rough bump stirred the mink link, wrenched it, and where Pharaoh hissed through clenched teeth he tore a pained shriek from Yugi.

"_Ah!" _The pain made him nearly hiccup, free hand digging into the sofa, eyes burning.

Yami made a second attempt languidly precise as he plainly tried to be delicate in his prodding. Every twitch in the synapses sent pain signals ripping through Yugi's temples. Pharaoh groaned and Yugi was sure the other felt it too. Whether his pain was more acute or less Yugi couldn't tell from that King's insistence not to cry out. He tried to be gentle, tried to feel the details of Yugi's mental wall and the mind link with greater experience. He may as well have twisted a fork in an open wound, dug for a bullet, tried to find the break in an arm as far as Yugi was concerned.

"Stop! _Stop!_" Yugi shrieked into the plush. Everything hurt, his vision exploded, fury passed to sheer agony and Yugi felt himself groaning fall into a choked sob. Sound came out high and broken turning his face into the couch to cry. "_Ah!_"

"Dammit!" Yami swore, forced to relent, and the boy could feel that the Pharaoh was weakened by him. Yami's insistence to dominate or attack was crushed under his vow, allegiance, to protect and despite the burning urge Yugi knew was there to press deeper the Pharaoh surrendered his attempts at the dissection.

He unhanded Yugi fast, unfurled him, and manhandling the boy fell into the couch to gather Yugi up into his arms. Yugi's body shook, rippled with loathing in pain, and Pharaoh cradled his head, pulling the smaller body into his lap to rock them.

"What did you do?" Yami demanded, baritone deep and panicked. The interrogation in his voice driving for a confession was bleakly brutal but his hands worried Yugi like his was a child trying desperately to iron out the creases of pain in the boy's body.

"It's hurts!" Yugi seethed stubbornly clutching at Yami's shirt, face buried in his clavicle where he brought hot tears to the surface. Yami had hurt him. That distrust, that suspicious resentment and repulsed dislike bloomed.

"I know," the Pharaoh cooed, hand carding through his locks. He was rocking them still, seemed panicked at what he'd done but still on the verge of fury. "What the hell did you do?"

"I want you out of my head," he croaked pathetically, body still bouncing with sobs.

"Why?" Yami demanded and at the complete lack of understanding Yugi pushed at his clavicle, disgusted, and tried to pull away to escape. Pharaoh caught his upper arms in vices, nearly bruising, and refused to let his unwilling, wildly frenzied, body put distance between them. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know!" Yugi spat, tears burning down his cheeks like fire, but his heart supplied plenty of words of its own on the matter. _'I don't trust you_' was the top of his list in burning letters.

"Look at me." He ordered fiercely hauling the boy closer again as he squirmed.

Yugi's eyes shot up, furious, loathing and Yami trembled visibly teetering on the edge of his self-control. He wondered if Pharaoh could see it, everything flashing through him as he let the white hot hate bubble through him. Were any of the thoughts clear even if Yami couldn't hear them? '_I don't trust you enough to tell you anything'_ and worse '_I don't trust you to make this better_' or '_I want you to go away_'?

"I'll stay out of your head," Pharaoh promised slow and deep before warning, "but promise me you will _not_ do that again. Understand?"

"Let go," Yugi spat, "_now_."

"Promise me."

Yugi couldn't bring himself to give him anything, to release anything, when he was so aflame with this much anger. Yami had _hurt_him. It relayed over and over in his head. Something was wrong. Yugi was proud, not a cowering weakling and he would not let Pharaoh take anything from him by force. A complete resistance, revolution, against domination was rioting up inside him.

"Your eyes are red." Yugi remarked sharply. It was true, horribly, and as if slapped Yami seemed possessed at the knowledge.

"What?" Yami whispered. He let go, pushed off his calves, and floundering disappeared into the downstairs toilette with fumbling hands.

Yugi darted off the couch, delinquent, and pounding up the stairs freed himself to the seclusion of his room. He fell back onto the bed, body convulsing into trembles, tears resuming in a more intent purposeful way as he buried his face in his knees and cried out to himself like a screaming child.

Yami hadn't had red eyes since the first. The first few times he possessed Yugi they had been brilliantly crimson, as they were now, just as the Spirit of the Ring had made Ryou's eyes greener once upon a time before he learnt better disguises. As the Spirit's primal quality had stripped back, softened, to a gentler kind of wildness Yami hadn't turned his eyes red anymore. By the time they had met inside the Sennen Puzzle Yami's eyes had been indigo like Yugi's and the Spirit had learnt to be not only less vicious but practically a gentleman by the time they entered Battle City. By the Memory World that nobility of a Pharaoh had totally reassembled itself.

Why were they red?

* * *

"Yugi?" Grandpa rapped curiously at the back of the door. "Dinner's up."

Groggily Yugi untangled himself from the mess he'd made in the sheets, head heavy from drifting off mid sob. Thank God the old man was home. The house felt less evil with him in it.

"I'm not hungry." He croaked.

"You sure? There's chicken," he tempted.

"No thanks Grandpa," he mumbled.

"Alright," he'd leave left overs in the fridge, or there'd be something else.

Yugi knew well enough how to make a meal by himself after all those months alone and unsupervised while the old man was off in some foreign country not wanting to disturb his schooling. His Grandpa didn't seem to cook anything really, he'd probably been out getting groceries and brought home take out for them. Yami was the only one who liked making family meals. He was fastidious like that.

Yugi preferred the simplicity of making lone portions. It brought back only memories of being thirteen, on a kitchen chair by himself, pouring mix into a pan and making what he wanted to eat for dinner with little lonely hands. The house had felt bigger then, all his, and the dank silence of his lonesome had been mulled by his burgeoning sense of pleasure in the state of peace that came from his own company. He could look after himself, do everything in the house, have it as clean or as dirty as he wanted without anyone checking up on him except for by phone every few days. Really Yugi had run the household himself till recently, it had been his dominion, and now he was scared to leave his rooms and face the beast.

* * *

Either he was getting better at avoiding and ignoring or Yami had stopped trying to break into his head. The mink link was less bruised two or three days later but it still intensely painful. The pain was decreasing, Yugi's temples didn't ache from the pressure so insistently, but the wound was still healing. Either way, gaping wound or not, it was still strong, still inflamed, and stiffly cramped where Yugi had set up his battered mental lock.

The Dark Magician was still missing.

So were his original set of keys. His second set had vanished shortly after the Saturday incident and on Wednesday afternoon he found himself perusing his room inquisitively to trace a vein of suspicion.

A CD was gone too. A very well loved and scratched one. One of his bangles was not in his drawer but he was sure it had been not so long ago. Reaching under the bed Yugi tugged out his album, sitting cross legged on the carpet, and listened to the house as he flipped through the pages.

Grandpa was still in the store, probably would be till six, Yami was taking one of his mid afternoon showers like a spoilt cat.

Yugi flipped the page back. There should have been a picture here. He flipped on, skimming, to the end. He traced the page. It was empty too. His stomach dropped, dry ice hitting bile and bubbling to churn in his pelvis. He retraced every page, searching, trying to refresh his memory. Was he thinking of the wrong page? Where the pages stuck? Wasn't it earlier in the book?

Yugi's heart rattled,_ thump-thump-thump_, in his chest.

He couldn't find it on the third retelling of the photo album. The old picture of his parents, the one with the three of them which was such a disastrously rare commodity Pegasus would've consented to make it a collectors' item.

That _bastard_.

Yugi threw the book across the carpet, found his feet, and imbued with fearlessness traipsed up the hallway past the thrumming of the shower to Yami's bedroom. He wrenched it open, left it thrown traitorously wide and as the intensity in him found a grove that was almost steady he took the handles of the top drawer of Yami's dresser in both hands pulled. He slipped the drawer clean out of the groves and rotating his hands dumped the entire contents haphazardly across the floor.

He didn't care.

Knickknacks tumbled against each other, socks rolled off in one direction, and dumping the wood on the floor Yugi repeated the process with the second drawer. A laptop clunked, rattled, unceremoniously on the already mismatched pile and Yugi let empty drawer number two slam, cracking, to fall onto drawer number one.

Grandpa wouldn't hear it with his dreadful encroaching deafness from too many years near industrial power tools and Yugi, frankly, didn't give a damn if Yami heard him. Let him.

This was the line. This was too far. This was where Yugi called _bullshit_.

He didn't hear the shower patter die off, pipes moaning in the walls, as he amputated drawer number three from the dresser and, on his hands and knees, began foraging through Yami's bedside table. He felt himself become more desperate when his things didn't just manifest, mind buzzing, and groping his hands tossed books, chargers, socks over his shoulder as he buried into the bedside table.

He pulled out the little drawer because he could, spite full as he shoved it to one side on the carpet breeding bedlam, bacteria, in this room he never wanted to see the inside of ever again. The exoskeleton of this room, the blank door, was bad enough.

"Yugi?"

He was so far gone he barely noticed. Ripping at the second drawer of the bedside table like a wild animal.

"Yugi." Yami rumbled grabbing him by the shoulders, fingers wet, and hissing Yugi rolled his shoulder free, batted him off with a blind hand behind his back and kept digging. "Yugi stop!"

Pharaoh sunk to his knees, secured his arms round Yugi's torso, pinning the boy's arms to his sides and heaving drew him back into his chest. Yami was sheened with water from the shower, jeans taunt and damp against Yugi's lower back where his shirt rolled up and his bare chest sunk beads of moisture through the clothing.

"What are you doing?" Pharaoh growled into his earlobe squeezing him fast as he squirmed.

"Give it back." Yugi ordered deftly. "Give it all back."

"Give _what_ back?" He held the boy pinned, unyielding, restrictive and the passion creeping into his tone told Yugi that the cut in the mind link which meant Yami was unable to _see_ what Yugi wanted irritated him.

"My parents' photo!" He snapped brazenly.

Yami became very quiet, refusing to let go as they breathed into each other, but didn't deny it.

"My keys," Yugi added, "_and_ the Dark Magician _and _the rest of my stuff!"

He added layers, peeling back at the unspoken suspicions but Pharaoh said nothing, chest heaving into his back, lips touching his cheek.

"Look at me," Yami ordered softly, arm easing to sink round Yugi's waist as he turned the boy's torso toward him with one firm hand still possessing his tender upper arm. Yugi was burning, molten, inside and refusing to rest his arms upon Pharaoh leant into them planting his palms on either side of Yami's knees.

"I want them back." Yugi repeated stubbornly.

"Kiss me," Pharaoh whispered, gentle.

"_What?_" Bile, disgust, rebelled inside him at the unrelenting, almost morose, expression on Yami's face.

"Kiss me." Unapologetic, insistent, somehow resilient to the sheer tide of Yugi's anger Pharaoh repeated his price.

_Crack_.

Yugi's open palm made delicious contact with the skin of Pharaoh's cheek, smacking brutally, in a way that seemed to wound. It couldn't quite carry the intensity of Yugi's intent, of his repulsion, and pushing off the carpet on his hands and knees the boy dismissed himself.

* * *

Yugi would find them, his things, neatly stacked on his desk when he returned home from school Thursday afternoon and as, as far as he was concerned anyway, he had nothing to apologise for. So, that decided, suspicions confirmed and disgust coiling sharply he made no motion to speak to Yami about the slap, the destruction, the request or the theft. Pharaoh didn't deserve that, or maybe he did… _no_. Not after stealing and infecting the precious well over the line of what was appropriate. Yugi was too far pushed away to bother being kind or reproaching. It wasn't his job to discipline Yami. Yami was an adult, older than Yugi, and he wasn't giving him an inch.

He'd taken, in effect, Yugi's independence, his parents' memory, and his trust in what amounted to a few personal knickknacks. Pharaoh knew the implications. He'd spent enough time squatting round Yugi's soul room for this not to be some cultural misunderstanding between roommates. No, Yugi was still seething.

Perhaps it would have abated sooner if it hadn't been for the kiss. No, there wasn't any kiss Yugi reminded himself at the terminology, just Pharaoh's orders to be bribed and paid for returning what wasn't his. The concept of touching Yami tensed him now. The idea of kissing him repulsed. Not for any physical reason just the disgust, the spite, which had been fostered inside Yugi which surmounted now to a force which might very well have broken his young body asunder.

Yami was handsome, Pharaoh was dashing and charming when he wanted to be or at least he _had_ been. The Spirit of the Puzzle had been his knight in shining armour for a while, had been his confidant, and his hero. Under the right conditions Yugi could've allowed it, could've wanted it, under the current climate he hoped Yami rotted, withered, before touching him again. Yugi wanted to be gone. Felt at war. Felt coerced and encroached and watched. Conscription, propaganda, home fronts…

That strange, bitter, darkness which seemed to pervade the atmosphere of the house had not transformed or withdrawn. Yami was not to surrender yet. That hungry, primordial, desperation Yugi had caught a glimmer of rising within the Pharaoh was still there. Whatever the cause he couldn't place it but Yugi _felt_ the house heave with intent round him like a cocoon. Whatever had soured within Pharaoh, whatever monster writhed, was not dead and Yugi would resist its insidious infectious inklings bitterly.

His mind was Troy. The mind link ached constantly but Yugi was beginning to accustom himself to minimum appetite, little food, little sleep and little comfort. He'd hardened, numbed, to the pain because of its constancy and the spite which made the Pharaoh repulsive propped him up and kept him moving simply to rebel. Yugi was not plush, soft, easily held or stroked and wooed. Yami had made him wiry, lithe and almost wildly sharp in defence against the domination.

"How was school?" Grandpa wriggled his moustache over the paper as leaning into the entrance of the store Yugi pulled off his shoes.

"Good," Yugi grunted, he'd given up trying to get Yami to socialise.

"Exams soon," he the old man relayed the obvious lazily, "worried?"

"I'll be fine." He shrugged traipsing behind the counter. Yami had sucked his sociability from him. He was drained with discontentment. There went life, there went light, there went Yugi's spark…

"Got a call from Hawkins," Grandpa prefaced.

"He and Rebecca good?" It was trivial. Yugi was exhausted. His head was throbbing.

"Very, need me to drop into Cairo for a month or two," the old man elaborated. "Trying to catch me the plane after next. I was thinking I ought to drop past the Ishtars' and get Yami's things for him. You want me to take them anything?"

"Huh?" Yugi lurched. "No, no thanks."

"I'll leave you kids plenty of cash on the card," Grandpa soothed distantly over the paper, "and I'll make sure I top it up. Just use the credit if I forget for a few days."

"Sure Grandpa," he permitted, "I know."

There went the last traces of his appetite and motivation. Eradicated, almost scared, Yugi leant back into his bedroom door and inhaling in a spasm was sure he felt traces of contentment, smugness, in the walls of the house like rats.

He fought the urge to fortify.

He would pass his exams. He would finish school. He would be normal. He would move out and travel and be alone on foreign shores in distant continents weak little tyrant be damned.

* * *

Yugi buried his face in his forearms. He didn't want to sleep. The house was a crypt without Grandpa. Today and yesterday had been deep abysses. Propped at his desk, there wasn't a ping of relief in the hours home within the house, so he lulled into his forearms. The tide of wanting to cry flowed and ebbed with the pounding in his head and the queasiness in his stomach. He wasn't going to last the weekend without causing a storm.

It was exhausting.

Yami had stolen something they were supposed to have. They were surviving, picking at each other, when life was supposed to be lush and thriving. Had they split the soul so badly it had become destructive to both of them? Would Yami gobble him up and fuse them back together to mend this? Would Yugi lose himself? Cease to exist? Would Grandpa have left two rats in a cage only to come home to find one of them fat and wild eyed on its lonesome after savage desperation?

Yugi wondered if he could succeed in amputating them from each other, severing the mind link to make them independent, if then this would stop. He doubted Yami would let him without breaking down the door. He doubted he could do it anyway. The agony of the last wound had mended rather than festering but it still pained him and, he supposed, must've pained Yami like a loss of oxygen. He'd failed last time and had very little damage to show for it but a brain splitting torture. The strand between them was heartily resilient, like influenza, and still the strength of the bond had yet to abate. So Yugi was shackled unappreciative of what Yami wanted.

He didn't very much care what Yami wanted right now after the senseless fear, pain and turmoil of the Pharaoh trying to force it out of Yugi without instruction or warning. The Pharaoh seemed to be morphing backwards to that core of wild, savage, destruction that had unfurled like a flower the first time Yugi had assembled the puzzle to let him rampage and murder through Domino. Yugi had dulled those memories but he remembered the hungry, snout snapping, greediness of that original state he'd uncovered. Yami had undergone a lot of civilizing since then and while it showed, made him cunning, subtle, he seemed to be slipping.

His eyes were still red.

This wasn't like the Spirit of the Ring who Ryou had attempted, unsuccessfully, to exorcize. Yami had a body and an urge. Hadn't Bakura said the Spirit of the Ring had dug the spikes into his chest in those early days when, in an attempt to pacify Bakura into submission, it had refused to let them be separated? Yami didn't seem very far off…_something_…the face it was an unknown variable which scared Yugi. He could deal with shadow realms, soul thieves, physical torture but not knowing was frightful.

Yami wouldn't physically hurt him. Never. The Pharaoh was still too bound by devotion to ever contemplate raising a hand to Yugi. It would break him to attempt it.

Yugi jumped.

Apparently Yami had learnt to knock. Now he understood he wasn't wanted or simply because Yugi had forced so much unconscious shadow magic into the doorway?

"Yugi?" He murmured outside. "I got pizza. You hungry?"

"No thanks," he called lazily, he was too tired to be angry. Too upset to be hungry. He was going to waste away at this rate. "I'll have some later."

"Okay," Yami permitted, withdrawing. He hadn't tried to reach out terribly well for days. Then again Yugi had been avoiding his parenting.

Waiting, something struck Yugi, and rifling through his bag under the desk drew out his cell to dial as his socks scraped the carpet. He pressed it to his ear hard, inhaled, and knocked his knees together.

"Hello Bakura residence?" So prim, so polite, Yugi salivated for sanctuary.

"Hey Ryou," he tucked his hair behind his ear in a fidgeting attempt to stable himself as he quaked, "how's your night?"

"Hey Yugi!" The other chirped. "Good, you?"

"Not great," Yugi would've felt foul for asking this if he hadn't been so direly stubborn in his resistance. "Grandpa's buggered off again. Can…can I stay with you for a while?"

"Me?" Ryou laughed, bemused, "what about Yami? I would've thought you two would have fun with the house all to yourselves."

They _used_ to when Yami was inside his head. Yami made the dark corners seem less imposing in the weak moments of the night. In those seconds of dread when the house felt foreign or Yugi wanted to sleep knowing there was another body in the house to watch over him it had helped to have the Spirit of the Puzzle watching over him. He had such confidence that nothing could touch him with the Pharaoh there. Even when Yugi's mind was a mystery to himself, when he blacked out, he had the sense he was protected. When he knew Yami was there, knew his name, he'd spent hours talking out loud to himself in the house to hear the Pharaoh answer inside his head or spot his phantom form leaning, slouching, into a counter.

"I…" Yugi could lie but he missed telling someone the truth safely. "I don't want to be alone with him. I don't like it."

"How come?" Ryou was surprised. Concern ebbed to a sort of empathetic gentleness that opened its arms welcomingly to any confession.

"I'm scared." Yugi hissed lowly, biting his lip, voice breaking.

"Of Yami?" Ryou tried to fathom but he was much quicker to understand, to comprehend, than Jou or Anzu would have ever been. He was staunchly serious, knowing, when he asked: "do you think he'd hurt you?"

"I…I don't know," he moaned. "Not physically, he wouldn't do that, but… I'm _scared_. I feel trapped."

Admitting it out loud floor, was devastating, crumbling at his world he'd sustained and built from a dream. He'd spent eight years trying to get the Puzzle. He'd made that wish and Yami had delivered.

"It's okay." Bakura assured firmly. "You can come stay with me. Don't worry about it. I've got everything, we can share books and toiletries and stuff. Just bring your stuff alright? Are you going to tell him?"

"No," Yugi was positive, "I'll text him and tell him I'm fine when I get to your place. Thank you, _so_ much, are you sure this okay?"

"Don't fret Gorgeous," Ryou fussed, "let him kick up a stink. See all the fuck's I give. I may not have much shadow magic but no one's getting into my goddamn home unless I invite them."

He laughed, surprised by himself and by Ryou. The second host who was more like him than Marik would ever be and more understanding of his confinement than any of the others could be.

"Tomorrow then?" Bakura suggested.

"Yeah," Yugi nodded, he'd sleep, wake early, pack and sneak off again. "I'll see you then. Thanks Ryou you're amazing."

"Don't worry about it," he assuaged, "I'm your friend. I get it. I'm glad you called. The guys… well, you know. Anyway, it doesn't matter, you can stay here as long as you want. It's lonely up here and dad never uses his fucking bed so you can have one all to yourself."

"Does your dad ever come home?"

"I don't even know," he scoffed, "whatever. I'm happy to have you."

"Thanks," words could not condense it, the joy of being able to take lodge with Bakura where there was sanctuary and sanitation of the air. Bakura who got it, who didn't ask or tell Yugi he was being silly because he _knew_. Ryou, wonderful Ryou, who would be a delinquent with Yugi and show the Pharaoh little loyalty or lenience regardless of history because of his innate empathy, mistrust, for the wounds a Sennen Spirit could dole out.

"Night Yugi, sleep tight," he endeared.

"Sleep tight."

* * *

1 I'm sticking pretty close to the canon really. Season Zero (manga/anime) and canon anime included.

2 I think the point of this is the same as when I wrote the original: grappling with some of the more interesting ideas of the whole _'Yami gets a body'_subplot which is too often pretty trite and overlooked. So stay tuned for part two cause that's when things get really sticky!

3 Yeah, no, if Yami ever got a body it would be because someone fucked up the paperwork in the afterlife.

4 Grandpa Motou lets Yugi skip _way_ too much school. I used to skip weeks of it too but, seriously, my mother didn't _know _I was off slaying dragons. Still I guess they're an adventurous family and there's something charming in that.

Anyway, as always, hope you enjoyed. The second chapter will be up in two days (Monday for those of you in Australia).


	2. Chapter 2

**AN:** Part two darlings and I really hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it.  
**Part:** 2/2  
**Warnings:** did I mention there's a _21 page lemon?_ Oh and this chapter is 25 pages?

* * *

Pressure and tension seemed to bleed out of Yugi at the promise of reprise. Assured he had an escape Yugi found himself with limbs that weighed like lead and collapsed. The rocky grogginess he encountered when he woke with the dawn knocked him off his feet and left him weak in himself. He had slept like a log, exhausted and sharp with hunger. He awoke sprawled like a nesting animal in a hive to shamble up in the blankets.

It would be okay.

He'd get out before the bombs hit. That thought had given him freedom to rest properly in a way he hadn't in what felt like_ months_. He was running, retreating, because it was the best strategy. He'd get out of this snare and get what he wanted.

The dawn was pale and the desire to lull in bed, to curl under the comforter and actually rest was dire. He could do that a Ryou's. He would sleep all damn day. He'd eat an entire pizza and once his stomach was sated, finally, he'd find a veggie wrap which sounded _delicious, _mouth-watering even. He could maintain himself, clean properly, take a bath, move about the house and throw himself across the couch. He promised himself that knowing Ryou would be permissive. Ryou would probably let him roam, watch him for wounds and blink as if Yugi was some savaged animal returned in from a storm like a cat running under the bed.

With that second layer of security he dragged himself, struggling, out of bed. He seemed bonier as he crept into his clothes and stacked his bag, making it puff to the seams with contents, and supposed the stress was withering him. It would've made him angry to see himself withered but if anything he dismissed it as something to make him lighter.

Five thirty am, on a Saturday, was ungodly but perfectly pristine for Yugi's intentions. He'd shower and gorge himself on breakfast goods at Ryou's. First he was taking the bank card, which he'd been sure to sequester close after Yami's onset of kleptomania, and getting a cab across town. First he was getting the _fuck_ out of dodge.

Let Yami rage.

He quite liked that idea actually. Smug for a flicker of an instant as, boots tight, he wandered down the quiet morning steps. There was a peaceful silence in the house that came with warmth, sleep, and security. It was weekend atmosphere and Yugi might've been sneaking up to watch the cartoons before his parents woke.

He forced himself to be smooth, brisk but nearly silent. He'd gotten very good at being light footed which was half the secret it seemed to evading Yami once he'd shut the Pharaoh out of his mind. He crossed the lounge, fingers gliding over the back of Grandpa's as he passed the dull TV set and snuck into the kitchen. His bag was heavy on his shoulders but it would do, the bank card was burning a hole in his jeans after all, and flipping the lock he twisted the handle to exit out the back alley.

The door didn't budge. Yugi twitched, must've been half asleep still, and tugged. The lock was down, the handle moved, the piece slid out of the joint but the door wouldn't budge from its socket. Yugi rattled the handle, panic rising, and squeezing heaved.

Nothing.

He felt the windows, pushed at them, and found nothing would yield to him. Curses whirring through his head Yugi bundled every ounce of self-control to pace, rather than run, into the store strong. The door there wouldn't falter either.

_Fuck_.

Swearing furiously in his mind Yugi considered upstairs. It meant going closer back to Yami now he'd made something of a racket. The pounding of feet up the stairs might be enough to stir the Pharaoh and Yugi didn't think he could either make it up to the ceiling window and then down the side of the building or out the side window and leap to the tree. Not when he was so tired. His body was in no mood to lurch like a squirrel in an attempt like that.

His mind whirred and bunching his fist he returned to the kitchen door. He felt it carefully, tracing it, and reaching with what Shadow Magic he had tried to feel it out.

"_Ow!_" He hissed, whipping his hand back, a minor shock.

Yami's magic. He was positive. It had infused every inch of the house and the Pharaoh it seemed had initiated a lock down. Clutching his hand Yugi rubbed at the burn. His magic wasn't strong enough to punch through this. It would be a mammoth effort just to force Yami's magic away from the door let alone long enough for him to run out.

Eyes darted, player's instinct ran through his options, and strategy formed. If magic wouldn't work, if Yugi couldn't go round it, and if he couldn't unlock it well, his eyes settled on a kitchen chair, he'd go _through_ it.

Call him ballistic, he would be in a second, but there was something cathartic about wrapping his hands round the chair and, revolting, sending a big, fresh, '_fuck you'_ to the Pharaoh. He swung the chair, to beat it against the window over the sink, and there was a raw ripple of pleasure as it shattered with an almighty calamitous roar.

A second of air, a second to consider mounting the sink and hobbling out through the broken glass before-

Shadow Magic whooshed to fill the broken hole, black and tangible, blotting out the world outside from view.

"_No!_" Yugi shrieked.

The chair fell back onto the floor, clattered on the tiles, and feet pounded down the stairs as Yugi screamed to himself. It was more a howl really, frustration falling out of the overfull rim, making noise simply for the relief of making noise: shrieking, groaning, high vocal, wordless, anger. Hands over his temples, knees together, swearing he bent at the waist to almost curl in on himself.

Yami's feet were hesitant on the linoleum, mindful of the glass on the floor, and Yugi was aware of the Pharaoh reaching out to him.

"Are you-"

"Don't touch me!" Yugi shrieked, choking round the lump in his throat as he whipped his head back up, wild eyed, to meet the stalwart expression of the king. "What did you do to the house?"

"I'm not sure." He confessed mildly. Yami's fingers twitched at his side as he spoke, glancing over the boy, no doubt curious to find fault or injury on Yugi's body. "Going somewhere?"

"You spied on me." The boy spat, nails digging into his palm.

"I had to." Pharaoh sulked stubbornly. "You won't let me in your head-"

"_I wonder why!_"

"You're hysterical." He groaned pitifully. "Are you hurt?"

"Fix it." Yugi ordered refusing to acknowledge him properly. "Open the doors."

"I…" Yami fumbled confessing eventually. "I _can't_. It's out of my hands. I tried last night. The magic round the house won't go down. It's panicking. You'll leave me if it goes down."

"_Tyrant,_" was all the boy could manage to get out, panic crashed against spite and burning the harsher of the two won out. He was sure his passion would burn him to a husk inside out.

"If I could just…" He struggled. "If I knew you wouldn't go maybe it would stop?"

"But I will." Yugi warned, rolling his shoulders, letting the bag thump against the floor onto the glass carelessly. Watching Yami put one hesitant foot after the other closer. "I'll hit another _continent_ and, so help me God, I won't ever speak to you or think of you again."

"I need you." Pharaoh appealed.

"I need a good exorcist." He snapped carelessly.

"_No._" Pharaoh was deceptively languid with that body. He could be fast with it when he wanted to be. Yugi's hips hit back it the kitchen counter, Yami pressed along the length of him, his arms fumbling back while Pharaoh's grasped the rim of the counter either side of him. "I'd give you anything you could want but you can't leave me. I'll go mad."

"_Go_ mad?" Yugi taunted.

"I need you." He repeated insistently, voice rough, the baritone was escaping harsh into a growl. "You don't understand. My soul's in shambles. When you cut me off the qualities that usually settle between us have to pick sides. I lose all compass on my own. It's like the Orichalcos. The longer I slave on without you the worse the darkness inside my heart gets."

Yugi wouldn't waver, bound against the spot, the small of his back bitten by the roll of the counter top. Nothing prickled the fury which had sprung up, fully bloomed, and impenetrable.

"Yugi, please, I…I was trapped in that godforsaken puzzle for five millennia. I forgot everything. I went wild, savage, I wasn't a man anymore. It felt like eternity in torment. My soul room was a ruined construct trying to fight Zorc out." He pleaded. "When you put the puzzle back together I was primal. All I knew was your voice, your warmth, your light. We were connected and the peace, the contentment, in your soul room taught me to relearn sanity. I would do anything for you. I was terrified of letting you know I was there, I thought I'd break you, thought I'd scare you. I couldn't contemplate how anyone could think of hurting you. To think of you being taken from me, of you being hurt, it made me _vicious_."

"I don't get what you want anymore," Yugi moaned lowly, prompted to the precipice which forced him to speak. "I don't know what you want me to do! You're suffocating me."

"I know," Yami groaned, resting his brow against Yugi's and that old bile twisting in him the boy tilted his head again. The Spirit seemed to wither. "Gods, I can feel how much you hate me. I can't stand it. I need you to open the door between our minds, our souls, again. I need you to let me touch you. I need to have your heart near mind, body and soul."

"No," he whined feebly, "I don't want you to touch me and… I don't know if I _can_open up my mind again. The idea makes me panic. I don't want to. I don't want you near me."

"Please," Pharaoh pursed, aching to move closer. "I'll do anything."

"I don't trust you." Yugi confessed sourly, mournful for something lost but not at all apologetic.

"I know," Yami admitted sighing, "let…just stay with me a little while longer. Give me one last chance to show you I'd never hurt you. Let me apologise. Give me a chance to win your trust back. Please_._ Nothing will happen that you don't want to happen. I _promise._"

"Promise you'll let me out of this hellhole either way," the boy demanded softly, eyes refusing to waver above Yami's clavicle.

"I swear to you." Pharaoh whispered. "I will get you out of here."

"Then get off me." The venom was gone but simmering just submerged beneath Yugi's stiff exterior. Cautiously unwilling Yami withdrew and Yugi relaxed, disgust ebbing back away, but the adjectives still flying through his head bitter. "Where?"

Where were they going to play their game this time?

"My room," Yami revealed.

Yugi considered immediately refusing but concept of having Yami defile his room was even worse. His toes wanted to curl in his shoes and turn it down all together but where Pharaoh made vows they were crisscrossed implicitly with ones expected of Yugi. For Yami to play along, keep his promises, Yugi had to play fair and meet him somewhere in the middle as expected.

"Nothing will happen unless you want it to." Pharaoh repeated solemnly. "I've only ever wanted to make you happy."

"Fine," Yugi consented reluctantly, Yami's softness was having a difficult time reaching him as the Pharaoh still seemed as much a predator as ever. The hunger hadn't abated and Yugi despised it. Pharaoh wanted them sweet. Yugi wanted to snap and destroy and push.

* * *

Yugi wasn't sure what to do. His body was so stubbornly displeased by the whole affair it had clamped up to a vice reactant to move or speak or watch the proceedings currently underway. He'd consent to whatever it took to fix this unfathomable break cracking at the normal order but he wouldn't do it smiling if only to smite the Pharaoh for the trouble he'd caused. Yugi was, he'd admit, awash with resentment that was poisonously unfurling in his gut just like greed was consuming Yami.

He suddenly understood why Yami hated this room. Yugi hated it too sitting on the edge of the mattress with the Pharaoh beside him trying, so gently, to stir that kindness and unconditional love of Yugi's back to the surface through the venom seeped into every pore of the boy and directed solely upon Pharaoh. Warm, adoring, arms came round his hips till one had rested, stroked, over his clothed navel where he was tender. Pharaoh caught his closest cheek over the yoke of his shoulder with a kiss, then another, and pressing his chest into Yugi's back tried to inspire the smaller to rest back into him. That wasn't happening, Yugi was a besieged city, and in his attempts to try and fold them back together Yami was building the resistance that was driving him mad.

Still, Yugi had submitted to trying anything necessary to amend this they both knew and, strategists to the core, they both took that very seriously and almost literally. Yugi was unyielding and angry, bitter, but he'd given the Pharaoh permission to explore that and soothe the avenue if he could and like a gamer the other would take that as a challenge and Yugi's resistance as a strategic barrier to overcome. Typical gameplay.

To make Yugi unwrap would be a struggle. Yami had ensured that with a lousy opening strategy while he'd been trying to figure out the rules of the game. Yami tightened his hold, a moment of desperation creeping over him, burying his face into Yugi's shoulder to inhale the scent of him and the boy stiffened dishearteningly. The Pharaoh eased immediately, reluctant to raise his head, and those warm fingers became gentle against Yugi's clothed sides. His palms strolled, back and forth, down Yugi's waist and the shift from tight to immediately soft kept the boy's hackles raised but the tension had eased somewhat.

Yugi hated him right now. Yami seemed to understand. Yugi was so insistent to keep the Pharaoh out of his mind however, tightened unhelpfully, that he could only brush the barest outline of the Pharaoh's thoughts without worrying his own would be caught. The wall, the lock, into Yugi's mind from the outside was immensely strong as a knotted coil of near contestant pain that through Yugi's hatred was maintained. Not even Yugi could seem to order it to untangle. Regardless of it Yami's mind was hidden from him, obscured, by the veil he propped up when he was strategizing like a good gambler hiding his hand till he had it on the board but Yugi could feel that he _was_ strategizing. Yami was buzzing with thought, suggestion, and caution about what move to make where and when. Yugi almost wanted him to lose. He was so mad he half wanted Yami to always be this despised to him. Had Yami gone so far Yugi didn't want to go back to the glory days even with the option? That was dire Yugi mused.

Yami ran his hands down Yugi's upper arms distantly, _almost_ Yugi reminded himself because Yami never made any motion around him without supreme thought, and raising his head placed another gentle kiss against the plush of Yugi's cheek.

"Can you wait here for a minute little one?"

Yugi almost railed against it, gut twisting, he wanted to hit the Pharaoh but too stubborn to un-sew his lips and bound by his word consented to nod curtly. It was haggard and took stupendous force to make himself comply with the gesture but it was less intimate than using the mind link at least.

Another kiss to his temple, no sulking, no complaints that Yugi had kept his mind wrapped and Yami rose to rifle quietly through the cupboards. When he sat back, gently, beside Yugi the boy curled his fingers in the quilt as the Pharaoh produced the little mp3 player and began switching through playlists. They shared a lot between them since Yami's unexpected return to the world of the living but the Pharaoh had insisted Yugi, who could hardly be removed from his music player, kept his and that he would steal the old ruffled one.

It unnerved him. Yami was a brilliant gamer whatever the mode of combat and Yugi, genius he was, couldn't quite figure out the point of it. There were plenty more obvious modes of forcing Yugi's compliance but that wasn't Yami's style. No, Yugi realized, chains and whips were garish, brutish and obvious. Yami planted seeds to pay off turns later. He planned for eventual victory not a combat win. So Yugi's stomach turned when, inconspicuously, Pharaoh returned one arm round his waist, shuffling closer, and held the mp3 to Yugi in his other palm.

Yugi frowned.

"Can you put the headphones in?" Yami appealed, baritone whisper soft and nearly hoarse. Yami had such a beautiful voice Yugi couldn't fathom why he hated speaking to him so much. Was it because of the intimacy of the mind link?

"Why?" He knew he wouldn't get an answer.

"Just trust me, just a little," Pharaoh pleaded but both of them had to concede it was just as much code for: '_you agreed to play along_' as anything else.

Yugi's fingers were stiff when they pealed from the sheets and slipped the plastic buds into his ears. Yami took the mp3, thumb paused over the play button and murmured:

"Close your eyes."

Yugi watched him, carefully heavy with suspicions, but unable to predict Yami's next move had to fold this turn and let his lids flutter shut. The Pharaoh clicked play, deposited the mp3 to rest in Yugi's lap and returned both hands to resume stroking along the length of Yugi's arms.

Yugi made a guess before the first cords started. He tried to plot for the next turn but Yami had thrown him again with the wafting, ear filling, sounds of delicate instrumentals. It was almost a lullaby, soft chorusing hums all the human interruption over the violins, but the combination of elements was eerie. It wasn't the background tracks to sleep it was the riffs of Celtic forests and midnights sneaking in the dark. Yugi didn't trust it but it was nice.

Yami kissed his cheek, Yugi jumped ever so slightly, but the hands gliding up and down his arms never ceased. He moved on the mattress, chest brushing Yugi's back and it was comforting at least to know exactly where Yami was and to feel the motion or stability of all his limbs within reach. This wasn't as disarming as it should have been Yugi considered. What was he after? What was he planning?

The Pharaoh's lips fluttered down the junction of his jaw, applying the traces of pressure to the skin just below his ear where the bones met and the neck began as his surprisingly warm palms squeezed Yugi's elbows. He twitched, poison coiling in his stomach unhappily, but found something inside him cracked when Yami planted the first tiny, wet, kiss behind his ear. His tongue just tipped the skin as he kissed up behind the arch of Yugi's ear, nose nuzzling under the boy's hair, and teeth squeezing together Yugi weakened despite himself.

Soft elements, the lack of sight and sound all compounded to create the effect he knew, recognised, immediately as Yami's aim. Like this it was easier to forget, as a warm arm enfolded his hips, another hand skirting just under the hem of his tee, that this was the Pharaoh. Yugi loved music, padded his life with it, and Yami knew that. He knew how Yugi responded, knew what soothed him unconsciously without his immediate notice, and it appeared Yugi was spiralling through a playlist of it.

That removed one physical element, calmed some of the immediate frazzled hatred with rhythm, but the eyes were just as genius. Closed up like this the Pharaoh could have been anyone at first, circling the bare skin of his bellybutton, planting a trail of firm but gently insistent kisses down the column of Yugi's neck, urging him to lie back into his arms a little. At the same time somehow this was _more_ like _Mou Hitori no Boku_. Less physical, less human, older, more like they had been, more like the Spirit had been and to that version of Yami Yugi had always responded.

Yugi felt a shiver run up his spine, felt the anxiety of his wavering grip in the sheets. Every second Yami seemed content just to stay like this: following the same circuit of kisses, stroking his navel, squeezing his fingers firmly round Yugi's hip. Yami licked, ever so subtly, immediately resuming the kiss behind his ear and Yugi's fingers flexed. Back down the trail Yami worked his mouth, a little wetter, down Yugi's neck till the tip of his collar where he found the junction of Yugi's neck and shoulder and sucked the skin between his lips.

Yugi inhaled, stubborn, but something gave just an inch and his tense spine lapsed control to Yami just momentarily. The Pharaoh swept it up, hand skiting up Yugi's bare side under his tee, leaning the smaller back into his taunt weight to cradle the boy deeper as Yugi's body eased ever so slightly to fall back into him. Yami squeezed his hip with the opposing hand of the set crossed round Yugi's torso and the boy let his head lull back still stubbornly holding his sighs and his swoons. He wouldn't give Yami that satisfaction, not at all, but the Pharaoh grasped at what he had relented fiercely with those gently insistent touches.

_Please relax, please let go, please let me have you back_… Yugi could almost hear the thrum of the chatter between their walled off minds but refused to indulge in it by looking further and opening himself up.

Yami used his legs to shuffle himself a bit further onto the mattress and, reclining almost in his arms, Yugi's heels dug in the carpet as his legs filled with tension. He knew Yami well enough to be aware of every little gesture. He caught that vein of strategic thought at the bud then when he could feel the Pharaoh's desire to lay them back down. That would be giving him an inch too far if Yugi allowed it and it would be an inch the Pharaoh would run with before he could reclaim it. Getting them back up if the Pharaoh got them down would be almost impossible Yugi warned himself.

His opponent knew he'd been caught out in a motion. Yugi wasn't far enough gone to be unaware of that intent and Yami wasn't anywhere near appealing enough for Yugi to allow it knowingly without deception. The Pharaoh's palm rubbed a course up his chest, never really stilling, and emerging from under Yugi's taunt collar brushed the opposing side of his jaw with his fingers. Yami kissed his cheek, thumb and palm flattering its twin, and tilted Yugi's face ever so slightly towards him to catch the corner of his mouth with a kiss.

Yugi's whole body, dependent now on Yami's strength as it reposed, became taunt and unresponsive refusing to turn towards the heat or reciprocate. Yami pressed on, recklessly bold as ever, and peppered another lingering touch against the corner of Yugi's mouth. The boy reacted, grasping Yami's knee almost fumblingly and gripping it hard through the jeans dug his nails in. He wouldn't open the mind link but he would make it apparent in his gestures that: _I don't like this, I don't like you, no, no, no_.

Yami stroked his cheek, contorting his arm till Yugi's shirt was distorted enough for him to feel the cool of the room against his bare skin, and gently urged Yugi a fraction closer. The arm slung round his hips hugged him more securely but Yami refused to move his leg from out of Yugi's painful grip. He was as equally unrelenting in his progress as Yugi in his resistance. Yami would not back down and brave, unwilling to turn back down the tangent, brought his lips back stronger. His mouth pecked half of Yugi's stubbornly pursed lips, drew back from the warning shot, then returned to kiss the boy properly.

A first kiss, Yugi's first kiss at that, it should have been better, happier, and coursing with sharp, icy, frustration Yugi found himself lashing out to dig his teeth warningly into Pharaoh's plump bottom lip. Yami tightened, ceased, face close and licking his lips pressed them into Yugi's harder refusing to withdraw or retreat. Yugi felt his breath quicken, ice nesting just behind his belly button, and tight as a bow turned his face. Yami's hand caught him, thumb gliding over his plush bottom lip, and turned the boy back to continue his fool's errand of a kiss.

Yami would not stop, thumb over Yugi's cheek bone, finger tips straying into the hair along his neck and lips insistently hot. Pharaoh needed this, he'd fight for it, and as he kissed those unresponsive lips adoringly Yugi felt himself shudder. Not with disgust, or cold, or anger but a frustrated kind of respect that was reverent at Yami's gentle desperation.

_Just one little kiss_, Pharaoh seemed to plead, and exhaling some tension from his bones a second time Yugi became nearly pliant. He flexed his lips, tried, attempted to get the feel of kissing back and, stroking his face, Yami clutched him closer unable to withhold a veiled purr through his nostrils.

A little heat crept into Yugi at the sound, something in him responded to that desire rather than turned away from it, and pushing back into the kisses he encouraged Yami to show him what the Pharaoh was aching to. Yugi allowed Pharaoh to present his feelings for inspection. Yami seemed to burn with that victory, hungrily, kissing Yugi with another fraction of exposed passion as he cloyed for more of that willingness he was plainly dying for.

His tongue ran, teasing and brief, along the sewn purse of Yugi's lips and tasting it, tempted, the boy removed some of the tension walled up round him. They came back together, Yugi's lips a little more parted, wetter, more inviting and eagerly aware of the tiny window of opportunity present Yami dipped his burning tongue into Yugi's mouth. Yami moaned, really moaned, making Yugi's knees rub together and the boy's vicious grip upon the Pharaoh's knee finally, eventually, relented. Yugi shuddered and Yami moved in for the kill as they kissed again with the same wetness and the same curious interlocking of the Pharaoh's tongue into Yugi.

Yugi's lost hand, which had been warningly perched nastily on the Pharaoh's now released knee, came fumbling up cautiously to trace the side of Yami's face in the dark. He felt his jaw, his hair, curious appraisal making Yami moan to kiss him harder and, breaking off, catch the inside of Yugi's palm with a praising kiss as Yugi ran his fingers dangerously across the other's face.

_That's it, please, so close…_ Yugi almost heard the gibberish but keeping the mental wall high refused to openly respond to or swoon.

Yami was burning raw with intensity, it churned inside him, but unwilling to swoon or sigh still Yugi only half responded. The boy was just peeking out from behind his defences and forcing himself to tone down his ferocity Yami's kisses began to unwind slowly back down to that teasing, perfectly consisted, softness. Yugi let him, pushed back, let their noses brush. Yami's fingers cupped and stroked his face as he kissed the details of Yugi's bone structure and peppered his lips with what was, for the boy, an all but forgotten tenderness.

This was, with his eyes closed, more like the Yami that Yugi knew or had at least liked. This was the middle Yami between the violent, unknown and primal Spirit of the Puzzle he'd first awoken and the final, obsessive, tyrant of a Pharaoh he'd been recently residing with. Yugi liked this kind of Yami, he had always responded better to this Yami, but had almost forgotten the Pharaoh could be like this. So, cautious, Yugi rewarded it's reappearance with a little uncertain willingness. All, mind you, without fully giving in for the briefest glimmer of a second.

The Pharaoh seemed willing to take that and press on further to try, viciously desperate, to win the game. Yugi remembered this mingle of intensity, unwanted qualities and almost goodness in Yami a little better. When they had fought Dartz and Yami had cycled through terrible to miserable for Yugi at their separation or when in Duellist Kingdom Yami had strayed too violent, too like when he first awoke him, tried to kill Kaiba and forced Yugi to reel back from him almost entirely. He remembered this same aching, crying, cling from Yami begging Yugi to come back his way, to stray back to him, and fold him back. Yami had grovelled for Yugi's presence before and Yugi wondered if perhaps he'd been too forgiving in this past.

Yami kissed his forehead lovingly, Yugi was sure, with the memory of where he'd flared the eye of Horus in the name of justice upon the boy's forehead so often. Arms easing down the boy, unfurling a little, Yami attempted once more, ever so gently, to try and urge them down onto their backs on the mattress.

Yugi considered the coaxing, the press of the hand into his navel and the curl of the experienced arm cradling him. He wavered, tensing, and predatorily hesitant pulled his legs up onto the bed with him to let Yami lay them back and arrange them on the sheets.

The shadow magic enshrouding and consuming the house was humming now. This was a dangerous development, a step closer to a final round, and Yami was, Yugi could guess, just like he had been for so many of their greatest duels: caught no doubt between exuberance and keeping a straight, calm, manner as he fought to claim his prize. Yugi hadn't been the prize before. He didn't like it now. He felt corralled as the Pharaoh tried to work him into a corner and find some submission within him. No, that was the wrong word. Yami wanted what Yami always wanted when Yugi pushed him back out of his heart: forgiveness, acceptance, closeness, permission to possess and protect what he wanted to be his.

Yami lay beside him, carefully arranging the mp3 above Yugi's head as the music lulled on slow and smooth refusing to let it stop and break the atmosphere. Yami slipped his arm under Yugi's neck to cradle him, hand curling back to rest against the top of Yugi's head, as the Pharaoh leant down to resume kissing him. He was careful to keep his legs, where he asserted his weight, to one side of Yugi's and running his outer hand up and down Yugi's side mapped out a greater portion of his flank.

Yugi let him. Let himself be encouraged to place his arms back on the Pharaoh but left them, fingers twitching, by his sides. Yami stroked over the clothes from just beneath his armpit down his waist, following the contours, over his hip and purring ran his hand down the outside of Yugi's thigh.

Yugi could garner some relative security from the assurance that, as unsure as Yugi was in his placement and motion, Yami, for all his talented strategy, was going mad. If anyone was going to make the wrong step it would be Yami if his hunger pushed him too far off the edge of sense back to the primal.

If Pharaoh pushed too hard Yugi knew, from the tingling flex of his fingers, that he could lash out with shadow magic of his own. It wouldn't be enough to break him out of the house, in fact it would get neither of them anywhere, but Yugi took pleasure in knowing he could drive home a hit if the Pharaoh infuriated him. If the Pharaoh stepped across the line and failed to listen to a rejection Yugi could _make_ him stop.

It was cruel but, trapped and resentful, Yugi had a rush of pleasure, even as they kissed, knowing that he could hurt the Pharaoh in some small way with his rejection. He could attack with shadow magic and Yami, crazy but devoted, would _never_ think of raising his hand back at the boy. Even primal, brutal, Yami's inner most backbone would never allow him to turn shadow magic on Yugi or force the boy. He would trap them, lash out at others, but Yugi knew by now that his hatred, his loathing, was a more effective weapon against Yami than anything on Earth.

The Pharaoh wasn't interested in having his body, not even now really, no what Yami seemed to want was for Yugi to want _him_. Having Yugi meant nothing, held no pleasure, if Pharaoh couldn't coax the boy to letting him make love to Yugi. He wanted that, not submission, he wanted Yugi to let him worship him, adore him, and deeply seared by hatred Yugi was going to require a great deal of grovelling before he'd permit Yami's adoration.

Yami pushed up onto his arm, slipping it from behind Yugi's neck, to crouch on his hands and knees. Just as Yugi frowned, tempted to open his eyes, Yami peppered his lids with kissing a reverent thumb rubbing over the boy's bottom lip with the same hidden hunger Yugi had felt creeping, wafting, off the Pharaoh for days. Yugi relaxed back into the mattress, compliant to wait a moment, as Pharaoh's weight crept off the bed entirely.

He didn't leave the room, Yugi was sure of that, and stretching slightly he waited with more anticipation and trepidation than trusting contentment. Yami, he figured, wouldn't spring anything on him suddenly. The Pharaoh knew, acutely, how little Yugi trusted him right this instant and how disrespectfully the boy held his existence or his touch. This wasn't about lust, or force, or showmanship. Springing something too extreme now would have a counterbalancing effect to what Yami desperately desired to woo out of Yugi. He didn't want the boy frightened, unknowing, of where his touch might come from next. Yami wanted Yugi to know it was his decision to keep his eyes shut, that he could open them, but that Pharaoh would give him no need to because Pharaoh would reassure him with everything he wanted to know about his whereabouts.

So the boy contented himself with that prediction as he felt Yami rest his knee, testing, on the end of the bed and slowly ran his fingers down Yugi's calf. Pharaoh was warning him, in not to many words given how Yugi refused to use the mind link, of his intentions and slumping back a little from where he had raised his shoulders in Yami's direction Yugi permitted it. He could feel Yami lean more of his weight into his knee, letting Yugi know exactly where he was, hoping to let the boy trust him a little.

Cautiously, very cautiously, Yami's hand skirted under his pant leg and fumbled deftly with the buckles of his boots. It was just another mark of defiant resentment that Yugi had kept his shoes on and another symbol of the bridge Yami was trying to build by attempting to remove them. He moved gently, raised Yugi's leg by the knee and with his other hand unbuckled the boot and glided down his ankle to begin tugging it off in a smooth even motion.

Something about it, about how he stripped Yugi, placed the boot to one side and let his hand flutter back on the exposed ankle churned the boy's stomach. It was as if he was being stripped for service, nearly objectified, and for a sudden second, again, he _hated_ the Pharaoh.

Yugi kicked. Filled with intent as he lashed out and equally as firm Yami's hand flew to tighten, vice like, round his ankle and force his violent outburst into submission. Yami caught him so easily, so purposefully, that when he held Yugi's ankle prisoner in one strong hand that made the boy's leg still despite its' every intention and desire to kick something in Yugi rolled over with a lurch. Yami's grip eased and then flexing tightened to demonstrate that same dominating strength he'd been so careful to hide till now. This was how Yami could force him but how he wouldn't.

_Mine_.

Firm, strong, and baritone it rumbled warningly at Yugi even with the mind link off. Yami may not have been able to hear his thoughts, may not have been able to infiltrate the boy's mind, but Yugi would hear him when Yami wanted to make himself heard. There was such an emphasis that Yugi could hear the grating of Yami's control wanting to tumble over into primal means of domination. The Pharaoh was trying, very hard, not to surge and conquer and something about the brutally poised strength of it made Yugi flutter.

Yami asserted control and Yugi, to his own surprise, found himself submitting meekly to flood all the tension from his deviant leg. It became limp, submissively plaint, and rubbing his thumb against the ball of Yugi's ankle the Pharaoh slowly released his leg back onto the bed. Yami had proven he could conquer but would not.

_Good_, it was a quiet purr at the gate way of Yugi's locked mind, _now let me be one with you again_.

Yugi bolstered. Frightened by the concept he refused the idea of losing himself but moving as they had to the next stage Yugi couldn't find the strength to lash out with his opposing leg when Yami stripped it also. He inhaled, biting his lip, and unminding or unhesitant Pharaoh's hands rubbed, grasped, at the tension in his bare ankles skirting only barely up his bare calves inside the jeans. Yami contorted. Although Yugi couldn't see it he could feel the weight redistribute on the end of the mattress and, thumb brushing his toes, Yami planted a kiss against the ball of his ankle as if it were the most precious point in the world. To him maybe it was.

Pharaoh's fingers ran up his covered calves to his knees and applying gentle pressure bid them to part and make way for his weight. Yugi refused. Arms splayed by his head he held his knees together pointedly at the insistence. Yami relented, unwilling to force, but unwilling to back down crawled back onto the bed beside him.

Sitting the Pharaoh took Yugi's hips in his hands, warm digits daring under the hem of his top and the waist of his jeans. Yugi's hands found his, even though he refused to open his eyes, and without pushing away rested on Yami's palms expectantly ready to reject the advance. Yami didn't shake them off. He rather seemed to welcome them, stubbornly, grinding his thumbs into the junction of Yugi's hip bone knowingly. That possessiveness, the tyrant, flared between them in Pharaoh's motion and Yugi's imaginative memory. It was pleasing nearly but tension mounted and acutely aware of it the Spirit moved to dispel it. This wasn't about dominance, possession, this was about forgiveness.

Yami leant, lips warm and unexpected against the junction where Yugi's hem met his waistline. The boy jumped, fingers tightening round the Pharaoh's pulsing hands but still not forcing him away, and nuzzling Yami very reverently pushed the shirt up to unwrap, reveal, a portion of Yugi. He buried his face back, warm and tender, into Yugi's navel to pepper it with idolatrous kisses in a headily slow procession that was prayer like. Yugi was tense, unaccustomed, to this and bit his lip viciously when Pharaoh's tongue darted wetly into the indent of his bellybutton.

Yami covered every delicate, unexplored, inch between Yugi's navel and the waistline of the jeans Pharaoh's groping hands had pulled low and taunt on his hips. He claimed the skin here, nipped, just above Yugi's pelvis and insulted by it Yugi was torn between the pleasure of it and the hatred invited.

Pharaoh nipped, sucked at the skin, just underneath his thumb where the flesh was tight over Yugi's hip and it made the boy bend like a bow though he refused to sigh or swoon for the man. Pharaoh was, either through impatience or strategy, apparently discontented with that silence now and kissing Yugi's navel drew in his hands to the button of the boy's jeans.

Pharaoh popped the button free and the tension through Yugi skyrocketed. His hands, which had been left abandoned hesitantly on his own almost bare hips, flew to curl in the fabric bunched at Yami's shoulders. He quivered, Yami refused to cease unless ordered plainly and the pair of them were transfixed as Yugi allowed the Pharaoh to unlock that defence.

There was a second of trepidation on Yami's part, waiting, for Yugi to strike out but when the boy remained unyielding but poised he moaned lowly into Yugi's skin, just within the range of the other's obscured hearing, kissing his navel fiercely. He tugged, slow and steady, fingers hooked in both Yugi's jeans and underwear knowingly and patiently the pair of them waited to see how far Yugi would let him go. An inch, then another, unfolding, unwrapping, Pharaoh purred and rumbled. Till hooking his arm under Yugi's knees Pharaoh lifted them so his opposing palm could slide over the bare calf and work the jeans the last inches off Yugi's feet.

Pharaoh didn't release his knees, hefted under his arm, but instead holding Yugi's hip peppered kisses further down the arch of his hip bone along the pelvis. Yugi's fingers tugged at the shirt on his shoulders, pulled Pharaoh away from the newly exposed skin and up but not totally away. Yami seemed to ripple, greedy but caught between purring at new permission and permission denied. His elbows either side of Yugi's torso he let the boy's legs be and reverently peeling shirt from skin bunched Yugi's tee up round his collar under his armpits.

Pharaoh kissed warningly at his clavicle and Yugi's fingers, flexing, easing, groped at his shoulders in an acknowledgement of sorts. Yami seemed to quake, bow string tight, and Yugi had the oddest thought that he was glad the Pharaoh was still clothed. He didn't want the intimacy of nudity, didn't feel the other deserved to press bare skin, and didn't think yet that Yami wasn't fatally infectious. Yami's tongue grazed the tip of nipple, testing, trying and waiting as Yugi tensed in shock before easing as much as he could. Circling the bud with his tongue Pharaoh closed his lips round the hard, pebbled, skin and suckled. Yugi gasped, sound escaped, and purring Yami's teeth dug into the bud.

Yugi's hand smacked against Yami's cheek, his other still curled on the Pharaoh's shoulder, as he cringed in pain. Yami kissed the skin reverently, ran his tongue round it soothingly, and caught by a strange impulse of power Yugi slapped him again. Yugi's hand was weaker in its blow the second time, tingling palm resting on the man's cheek once he was done and turning his face into it Pharaoh worried his lips against it with equal devotion. Amazed, struck by it, Yugi's fingers carded curious through the hair he couldn't see and traced the soft skinned but elegantly featured jaw. Yami moaned, caught his fingers with kisses as they passed and strangely satisfied, confused, Yugi settled his hands back on Pharaoh's shoulders.

Pharaoh buzzed, kissed the opposing bud he'd yet to touch. He suckled it, licked it, and very, very, carefully flexed his teeth round either side of it. Yugi found himself sounding out, a tiny wisp escaping his opened lips which made Yami purr and, surprised, actually arched up into it. It was weirdly pleasant. Pharaoh repeated the gesture on both sides, slight sharp pressure very carefully dolled and wet heat which, rubbing his knees together, strung out another little grunt Yugi himself couldn't hear but knew he was making.

Yami sat back hands sinking hungrily across the outside of Yugi's thighs and, without pushing, left his thumbs rubbing against the boy's knees. Yugi found himself considering it as Pharaoh diligently plucked his navel once more while he waited. Patient he may have been but Yugi could make out the pulse of intent pleasure when Yugi softened his tension and shuffling his feet fractionally parted his legs.

_Gods!_

It must've been in his head. The music was still thrumming in Yugi's ears. A harmless stray thought Yami couldn't totally keep to himself when, running his hot palms up the inner flesh of Yugi's thighs he parted them wider for himself. Yugi's mind had uncoiled, ever so slightly, some of the pain had soothed and sheepish curiosity returned.

Disgust was nearly gone but there was yet a mild sensation of letting something slimy crawl between his legs when Pharaoh settled between his parted thighs. Yugi inhaled through his lips, waited, toes tight and swooning Yami leant over him. Pharaoh cupped his cheeks, kissed his forehead, stroked his fringe and brought his mouth to the ear bud of one side his whole body over Yugi's.

"It's okay," Pharaoh whispered intently just within Yugi's hearing, "I promise. Everything will be fine. Tell me to stop when you're ready."

Kisses peppered his cheek and Yami ebbed away. Yugi felt cleaner, Pharaoh seemed less a thing and more a man but not yet a king. Tender fingertips stroked his legs, the other moved in closer and Yugi, warmer, kind of liked him there. Lusher, no longer so totally unwieldy, Yugi waited expectantly for Pharaoh to make his choice about his next move but he needn't have waited long because apparently Yami had been long decided about what he wanted to try.

His palms seemed warmer, sandy nearly, running under Yugi's knees and along the back of his flanks to arrange, or encourage, the boys knees to rest bent over his shoulders. Yugi complied the ice in his belly melting, slowly, making him slicker, responsive, to temptations under the proper coaxing. Yami likewise was getting better at that a portion of his own tension, his ferocious greed, had vanished with minor victories and satisfaction. Pharaoh felt cleaner, Yugi felt him become less contaminating. The boy's knees over his shoulders, thumbs curled under and round to stroke Yugi's hips Yami ever so slowly began to pepper kisses, licks, a nip and a suck between the most tender parts of Yugi's inner thighs, deep and close.

Yugi arched, impassioned, Yami pressed on hungrily licking almost at the junction where the boy's pelvis formed. First sucking against one side, tilting his head to pepper the other, devouring stirring a moan a proper, uncertain, moan from within Yugi where he was churning warmth. Yugi's legs tightened in at the pleasure, unfolded to part somehow wider and willingly with his ankles crossing against Yami's arched back. Yugi turned his cheek into the bedding, lips found the curled second knuckle of his index finger and found a string of little wonderments falling out of him.

This wasn't lust. Yugi's mind uncoiled further stingingly peaking at Yami's to confirm the feeling. This didn't feel like raw, nasty, conquering no…This was worship. Pharaoh adored, pulsed, against him with ancient, utter, devotion and kissed prayers into Yugi's sacred skin.

He lost the strength in his legs, one slipping weak from Yami's shoulder and as the Pharaoh held its twin hoisted over the opposing side, kissing into it, he messaged his hand along the fallen milky leg which left Yugi sprawled open. The boy's head went back, purring, and Yugi felt a responding shiver of satisfaction wrought out of Yami.

Yugi pulled his lids apart, quaked under a surge of emotion, fingers tearing at the headphones and in response to the panic Pharaoh froze, fumbling, to cast his eyes up into Yugi's panting face. The boy had no strength to speak anymore, another coil crumbled, and scrambling onto his elbow reached out to hook his fingers in Yami's collar and whining tugged harshly. Pharaoh cooed, hushing, untangled his arms and drawing himself to sit up between the boy's legs fastened his arms round Yugi as the boy's locked viciously round his neck.

Pharaoh felt the small of his back in one hand, trailed up his spine to cup the back of Yugi's neck with the other, hushing, brought to moan when, like his arms, Yugi's legs hooked round his hips as he crouched on his knees bent.

"Should I stop?" Yami checked nuzzling against Yugi's cheek, panting with desire, and hazed with it himself Yugi fell into mumblings.

"No no _no,_" he ordered under his breath, shaking his head into Pharaoh's neck panicked somehow.

"Let me try?" Pharaoh appealed temptingly, bundling him up into his lap as he sat and brought close Yugi found himself in warmly wandering hands blinking up at gooey crimson eyes.

"Take these off first," the boy instructed, fingers wandering curiously over Yami's shoulders.

It was bizarre that he had a body, supernaturally insane, and it hardly felt real at this second. Yugi was sure he was dreaming, wondered if seeing the skin would break the spell and help him relocate the monster inside the Pharaoh twisting under the creamy pallor. He didn't know what he wanted. Trust had come back to life a little, part of the dead garden bloomed back resilient but trepidatious and Yugi's retreating repulsion warmed up his tense, pained, corners like a withdrawing tide. Still the uncertain newness of the recent loathing had left him as sharp and acute, sensitive and darting, as a wild animal.

Yami purred, rumbled, like a beast. Kissed his temple, squeezed him close, licking up the column of Yugi's neck like an animal in heat, possessive, as the boy's fingers found the bare small of his back. Pharaoh's hands withdrew from him, half frenzied, and ignoring buttons settled instead for tugging his shirt over his head and tossing it aside. Pharaoh slumped his arms back down, exhaling heavily, and suddenly strong Yugi's hands hit his shoulders and forced Yami down onto his back.

Pharaoh blinked up at him but didn't move as Yugi found himself sitting atop him, curiously intense fingers mapping the freshly exposed skin. Yami slumped his head back, let Yugi move utterly unrestricted in a fast ambling search and moaned softly to himself. The process was somehow utterly contenting to Pharaoh, perfect, and Yugi found himself at liberty to move however he liked. Yugi shuffled back on Yami's thighs, planted in place, tracing the broad chest and the clavicle in fascination. The body of the other was new toylike yet utterly, despairingly, alien in its qualities.

Yugi's fingers unexpectedly hit the waist of Yami's trousers and, bumping them, tilted curiously:

"Can-?"

"You can do_ whatever_ you want," Yami purred, eyes fluttering and rather than cocky appeared innocently euphoric just to be a spectacle for Yugi to play with. A Pharaoh prostrate before his god Yugi realized, suddenly a little bemused and still wandering fumbled with Yami's zipper.

He wasn't as respectful, nor as careful, nor as knowledgeable as Yami but mingled dislike falling back to suffuse with old fondness made something new as if they'd never met before and left Yugi fearless. He didn't care if Yami watched, being as non-offensive and un-opinionated as Pharaoh was currently. Yugi knew he could technically do no wrong. His simple curiosity to touch Yami, the dumbfounded willingness to explore, was soothing enough to Pharaoh after weeks of vicious rejection of Yami's mere presence. When he had riled at Pharaoh's shadow, offended, and that now Yugi would inspect him mysterious was balm enough for Yami's endlessly aching hunger.

Yugi tugged the pants down, rolled them over Pharaoh's hips as, carefully mindful not to disturb Yugi's balance the man raised them helpfully. The boy felt the bones of his tense pelvis and followed the thin trail from the navel to the thick, coarse, curls he ran the tips of his fingers through. Yami moaned fingers fumbling, fighting to be gentle, as they grasped Yugi's thighs settling either side of his and found the boy's hips during Yugi's explorations.

Cruel, torturously so really, Yugi fluted his fingers over Pharaoh's burning arousal. One hand tucking his hair back the other just tracing the vein, the structure, the wet tip idly rather amazed how subtle the differences in anatomy could be. Biting back Yami's fingers tightened harshly round Yugi's hips at the gesture, nearly hard enough to bruise, but driven by devotion he forced himself to relent his grip so as not to harm the boy. Struck by it, Yugi ran his idle hand along Yami's tense forearm and was tempted to test him.

Without pitying kindness to bridle him, or embarrassment to falter him, Yugi ran slowly curled his fingers round the shaft and absentmindedly regarding Yami's face stroked languidly. Yami's moan was strangled by the fight to not pull his hands away from Yugi. Having to quell his initial reaction to grasp the boy tighter, instead curling his hands to fists and digging his nails into his palms against Yugi's thighs, Pharaoh's pleasure was mingled with the torture of self-restraint.

Yugi repeated the gesture, hand motioning up and down, testing. Head back, heart fluttering, Yami swore through tight moans and withheld what vicious ferocity pulsed within his belly to capture Yugi and ravish, conquer, through the pleasure.

"_Yugi_…" He managed thinly, brows twitching as the boy refused to stop. "Little one if you don't stop…_ah_…god…" Yugi watched him fight through it but Pharaoh couldn't seem to find the conflicting strength to really tell the boy to cease.

Yugi had the sudden urge not to speak, not to open his mouth, whatever had stripped him of his vocals was strange instinct but deciding he'd tortured Yami enough for his own assurance glided his hand up the shaft and dipping down kissed the tip in a lightning fast motion that was suddenly done. Pharaoh purred, bucked, a second too late to catch anything and slumped back as it passed.

Yugi sat rather patient, rather unhelpful, on his thighs and collecting his breath Yami found his arms again to sit up and enfolding Yugi hold him to his chest.

"Can I keep going?" Pharaoh checked, heart pounding into Yugi's upper arm, tilting down against the smaller face to kiss from the top of his cheek up his temple.

Yugi nodded. Yami's mind brushed his hesitantly, hands still stroking along the bone structure of the boy's bare body, and hopeful in a feather gentle motion tried to coax Yugi's. There wasn't pain it struck the smaller curiously, nothing hurt, and fidgeting, frozen, Yugi stiffened a little physically to try just-so to nudge back mentally. For the first time in weeks it didn't hurt, didn't repulse, and as they met a little at the in-between space at first Yami didn't seem to feel him. Yugi nudged again with his mind at Pharaoh's trepidatious inspection and the King stiffened, physically, suddenly rigid against the boy. Yami's mind, the part of it reaching across the link to Yugi's fluttered in a delighted, shocked, spasm and Pharaoh gave a dazzled, utterly relieved, laugh before he caught himself.

Yami's mind seemed at once to want to lurch at Yugi's like a fish hook, almost flung itself at his peaking tip creeping out from behind the uncurling wall, but as Yugi panicked at the wave of it Pharaoh forced himself to be restrained. Like two cats circling. Yugi eased when Pharaoh seemed to find the shaking will to relent his desire to invade Yugi's almost pried open mind and surrendered to being gentle. Creeping back together Yugi let the edges of their minds touch, not intermingling, just rubbing and the mind lock uncoiled another knot. The mind link seemed to regenerate a fraction but as Yami's consciousness brushed his Yugi felt a shock and squeaking found it hurt from an old wound.

Instinctively Pharaoh's physical arms, which Yugi had all but forgotten existed, clutched him closer and cooing, fretting, ran fingers through his locks. Yami's mind pulled back at Yugi's sudden falter, sudden pain, but amazed, reminded, suddenly that Pharaoh had a body Yugi grunted into Pharaoh's neck trying to make him come closer again.

Naked almost, wrapped round each other, a new, weird, level was added to Yugi's sensations, Yugi's sense of being, when Yami tenderly brought the edges of their tentative minds back together. Yami ran his hand down Yugi's spine, kissed his temple, brushed their consciousness's and shivering Yugi found it felt good. Pharaoh somehow buzzed, physically and mentally, with joy some of the infection within him cured but that baseline hunger only seemed to intensify for more.

Like pulling the plug, snapping shut the lid of a box, Yugi's mind darted back unknowably and Yami groaned but forced himself to remain pliantly gentle round the boy's body and not chase after his mind like a fox after a rabbit.

"Bad?" Pharaoh supposed, aching to use the mind link, trying to find the cause of the retreat. Yugi's arms came up his back to grasp his shoulder blades and still soft the boy shook his head into Yami's clavicle.

"Keep going?" Yugi ordered softly, voice barely making it out at a whisper, but immediately responsive to his desires, having a line to follow, Pharaoh was eager to comply.

Arms very, very, carefully handled Yugi as they laid him back not as if the boy might break more, Yugi realized, concerned that he might lash back if he was displeased. From a small animal that had needed coaxing had Yugi become some vengeful god for Pharaoh to sacrifice for and please mindfully? Truth be told that didn't so much bother Yugi as the other option. He didn't want to be weak, he didn't want to be conquered, he wanted Yami to know that nothing would happen to him unless he allowed it and Pharaoh apparently understood that. Indeed Yami doted.

Pharaoh's hand rested on his bare navel and Yugi covered it with his own set to trace the knuckles and regard the warm weight as Yami leant to the bedside. He came back, not empty handed, and hand dragging down the boy's body returned to cup Yugi's knee.

"Still hate me?" Rather than accusing Yami sounded to be taking stock, worrisome, and unable to totally discern the inside of Yugi's head as the boy rolled over the question.

With Yami watching so intently Yugi had to think about it but the fury seemed neutralised, doped away, as if Yugi's damage had finally been treated, cauterized, with proper antiseptic. Mild, still unsure of his voice or unwilling with it, Yugi shook his head slowly. Pharaoh smiled.

"Like me?" He wondered offhanded.

Yugi considered it with equal thought. The pain, or most of it, was gone from his interior but the body, the heart, the mind was now numbed in a new cold way. Curiosity, interest, old nostalgia crept out from behind his uncoiling wall but weren't tempered with anything greater yet. Slowly, deliberate and distant, Yugi shook his head.

"I'll work on that," Pharaoh promised, smile mournful but hopeful. "May I?"

He squeezed Yugi's knee gently and, nodding, the boy drew up his leg to let Yami slip closer and re-extending it let the Pharaoh back between his lithe legs as he remained splayed on the mattress.

There was a strange... _absence_ of sensation to Yugi. Not literally, physically, more what he expected to feel was numbed. Was it because he didn't like Yami enough to be nervous or because he had so much control? Regardless that virgin's nerve was steeled, subdue, under a critical eye. This didn't feel like sex, didn't feel sexual or violating really, wasn't infectious or heated or truly cold more Yugi found it seemed some religious experience, voodoo, black magic, some supernatural attempt to resew energies. Maybe he shouldn't have been surprised by that.

"This hurt?" Yugi inquired surprised by his own casual nonchalance and freezing Pharaoh's gaze flickered to his face as the smaller batted a strand of hair out of his own eyes.

"If you do these things right," Yami murmured, "then they never hurt. It's a myth to suppose that they always do. If something hurts then it means something's wrong. If I hurt you then I'm a clumsy fool. Pleasure isn't rushed, it's an absolute, if I sacrifice one moment or pleasure for another one later then I've failed."

"You think?" He pondered.

"There's always a little discomfort in experimentation but that's different to pain," Pharaoh rued. "I should never _hurt_ you. I wouldn't dare, not with you, because if I hurt you you're not ready. If I hurt you again I think I'll just die."

"Would you hurt someone else?" Yugi quirked, a little more sharply this time and Yami chuckled.

"That's impossible," he answered, "I'd have to want someone other than you."

"I don't get you sometimes."

"I know," Pharaoh sighed, "I'm sorry. I don't think shadows are typically very eloquent."

"You didn't talk to me," Yugi frowned, "you didn't try."

"I _tried_." He insisted. "You wouldn't talk to me. You wouldn't even look at me."

"You scared the crap out of me." He shot.

"I'd never hurt you."

"He says now," Yugi mulled stubbornly, eyes rolling over the ceiling before they fell back on Pharaoh. "I'm not the one who mind crushed school kids, or killed competitors, or tried to kill Kaiba, or used the Orichalcos, or broke promises. How many times have we had this conversation where you apologise for hurting someone? I think I get to be a little scared when you start acting like a psycho. I think I get to want to be an adult without you breathing down my neck every day. I think there's a point where you get to take responsibility for yourself. We worked through Zorc, your memories, we fixed it so I don't think that just gets to be the excuse you use for not talking to me."

"I…" Yami floundered, nearly coloured, and sighed under the appraising eye. "You're…you're right."

"Yeah I am." Yugi snorted, almost laughed, nearly smiled but let Pharaoh frown longer.

"I'm sorry. I thought… I thought I had more control. I didn't want to scare you. I don't want to stop you growing up. I just…I adore you. I _need_you, literally not figuratively, and I think it's hurting you too when we're apart."

"I'm not sixteen Pharaoh," he reminded extending his fingers, reaching, to brush Yami's navel appealing. "We can't hide in my bedroom anymore. I want to go places. I want you here but I want to know I can have privacy if I want it, that you trust me, that I can trust you. I want to know I don't _have_ to let you into my head. You need to stop holding so tight. I'm not going to break. I'm okay."

Pharaoh grasped at his fingers. Hurried but struggling to be tender and squeezing them between his digits pressed his lips to Yugi's knuckles.

"I don't know what I'd do if I lost you." He nearly whimpered.

"You'd kill everyone. Go totally berserk." Yugi found himself laughing, smiling, "it'd be a rampage."

"Don't even joke. That would be _hell_."

"They're all gone," Yugi insisted, struggling up onto his hands to meet the Pharaoh eye to eye. "We won. Not everyone is out to get us. We're alive. Stop acting like I'm dying."

"Does it hurt you too?" Yami prodded suddenly, eyes running curiously over his face as he brought his hand over the boy's cheek.

"What?" Yugi tried to fathom.

"When I can't touch you, when I can't feel your mind or you soul the pain's acute." Pharaoh explained. "When you…did _something_to the mind link you were in pain too…?"

"Yeah…" He withdrew a little at the confession.

"How much?" Pharaoh pushed.

"I…" Yugi floundered.

"_Tell me,"_he compelled. "If we're trusting each other then I need to know you'll tell me when you're in pain. I want to know if your half of the soul needs me like mine needs yours."

The residual anger, the spite, twisting in Yugi refused to admit reliance if only because it gave Yami some share of power. It was selfish, stupid, but Yugi's knees wanted to draw in, away, resume some distance and cling to utter independence. He wanted to be all grown up, needless, but he had to admit in the human race that was something of an unhappy rarity. Pharaoh's fingers hooked under his knees as Yugi almost folded in and, tugging stoutly, kept them right where they were with the elder between his waiting thighs. He felt them tinged, felt the powers tug at each other for dominance, and forced to remain openly exposed Yugi relented however unwillingly and stubbornly.

"It hurt." He confessed tightly.

"Since when?" Pharaoh dug.

"Since…" Yugi dragged his teeth over his lip and, fingers flexing round the boy's knees, the Pharaoh refused to relent imposing himself. "Since I locked my mind."

"How much?"

"It's…" he wanted to down play it but he grazed Pharaoh's glance and found himself hesitant, guilty, to lie. "It's agony."

Yami eased, resumed a certain plushness, and sighing swept his arms round Yugi's waist to hold him closer. When the Pharaoh buried his face into Yugi's fridge and the boy found his neck a part of him, unwilling, unwound.

"I can barely sleep. I can barely eat. I'm anxious and I'm angry. I just feel dead." Suddenly Yugi couldn't shut up. Confessions came pouring out and with them dragged hidden tears. "It _hurts_all the time."

"You need me too." Pharaoh concluded strangely contented.

"Don't be so smug!" He snapped.

"_Shh_, I'm sorry," Pharaoh placated immediately fingers carding through his hair. Yugi squirmed and wrapping him up tighter Yami peppered the boy with kisses. "You've been in pain. I can make it better. Are we agreed?"

"Are you going to be sane?" Yugi snorted irritably. He was rubbed all the wrong way again, hackles raised, at the pleasure, the security, Pharaoh felt in his dependency.

"If I can be one with you, trust you're safe, you can be assured of it." Pharaoh promised smoothly batting the hair from Yugi's vengeful face business like in his proposed contract. "I won't ask for much. You can have my support for anything. Now, can I make you feel better?"

"You can try," he sighed, but even now the spur of passion was retreating with a lighter pace. Fog clearing the Pharaoh was, finally, starting to reach some kind of clarity inside Yugi's mind. The more he cut the haze the lighter he felt and apologetic he let Yami's mistake, insult, slide with better intentions murmuring; "I think I'm a little crazy…"

"You're perfect." Yami stressed cupping his cheek to lavish the arch of the other. "I worship you."

"I'm not sure how healthy that is." Yugi soured weakly as Pharaoh pushed him back, directed more like, with tender fingers.

"If I was some boy at that punk filled school maybe," Pharaoh supposed belligerently, "but I'm a man who spent five thousand years in torment after ruling a country. I think we can safely escape with a little…obsession."

Pharaoh's fingers smoothed over his sides, down his thighs, inhaling with that same note of possessive totality. Yugi flickered a little at the dampening of Yami's eyes watching them darken and became hesitantly taunt under the coaxing. This was the side of Pharaoh now he'd never liked facing: the greedy conqueror who wanted to bottle Yugi up for himself somewhere far off and secret forever. Was that why he had wanted Yami to leave for the afterlife? Because in staying Yugi knew, unknowingly at once, that the Pharaoh would never consent to let go of him?

Slick fingers, cold, brushed slimy at Yugi along the ring of muscle and while he gasped, uncertain, Pharaoh almost seemed to smirk when the corners of his lips twitched up pleased. He'd wanted this, Yugi understood, for some time perhaps since getting his own body or even _before_. The physical craving for intimacy had never been an issue before now when Pharaoh could posses him at a moment's notice. When Pharaoh lived inside his body, his mind, his soul Yugi had very little choice to flex in keeping him out. Now Yami had his own body and a world to invade if he wanted to be here, opening Yugi's thighs, circling slick against his entrance as if he was savouring the intimate vulnerability it unlocked in the boy he wanted.

"I would've killed them if anyone touched you," Pharaoh whispered, and Yugi realized he didn't mean in aggression.

"How do you know someone didn't?" He murmured sharply, inhaling through his lips as the tip of Pharaoh's index finger dipped pushing, prying, past his resistance to rest just inside. He groaned, soft, not pained but locked at the strangeness of it.

"No one touched you, no one even kissed you, I know." The King warned resting his palm beside the boy's neck to lean over him as the cool digit curled and Yugi became more intimately aware of the man's weight between his parted legs. The boy gasped a little, tiny sounds, at the motion and Yami seemed to devour it with a soothed inhale in satisfaction. "I made sure of it."

"Why?" Yugi snapped weakly, hair falling, fringe sticking as Yami pressed to slip the digit languidly to the second knuckle and he was forced to bite his lip for the groan that wanted to escape in reaction. The touch was strange, almost nigglingly unpleasant, unnatural and infesting but carrying the molten heat of a fever which made his raised knees quake.

"They couldn't," Yami seemed to struggle to word it, "they don't deserve you. I… I couldn't let someone touch you like this and fail."

"What about-?" He struggled to speak, to call up friends names in suggestion, maybe render to push Yami back thoughtfully but was unable to when the King bottomed out inside him to the third knuckle and drawing back fractionally thrust to make the boy flex round him. "Nh…"

"Shh," Pharaoh soothed, "they don't deserve you."

"Do you?" Yugi strained, mewling breathless despite himself, as rumbling Yami guided the slick finger out creating some mild sensation of relief that was bizarre before thrusting slowly back in from tip to stern. It was a ripped sound Yugi made, befuddled, caught straddling discomfort and an eerie kind of metaphysical yummy heat.

"Maybe not," he admitted, "but I have you. I need you. You need me."

Bound, stuck, to each other Yugi had all the imagery; cancerous, tumours, parasitic…then Yami thrust and something shambled messily. _Good_. Nice, yummy, hmm...oh again… he bit his lip. He was falling backwards over a precipice. He didn't want Pharaoh to catch him but this beast wasn't going anywhere. Maybe it never had. Maybe this old savagery was an inescapable curse he'd invoked upon himself as payment for his wish. He could have friends, a charmed life, but perhaps the cost of all of it was to let Yami have him in return?

That should've been a more distressing idea but it seemed fair somehow. The puzzle was supposed to bear a curse. Yugi had avoided it, gotten his wish, and of course there should be some cost. You never got away scot free with magic. It wasn't the law of humans who were flawed and who appealed court cases or lost evidence. No, magic always caught you eventually. Yugi was tangled up in it quite literally, toes curling, groaning-moaning behind his teeth, calves tight, knees weak as Pharaoh conquered. Resistance lessened in his muscles as Yugi caught the hang of it. Once it started to feel sickly pleasurable, once Yami got the hook in, Yugi couldn't seem to make himself uncomfortable anew.

Pharaoh withdrew the padded tips of two digits brushing then sinking in, like teeth into skin actually, and Yugi's lips came apart as if reopening a wound when his head fell back.

"Ngah…" It was a senseless, stupid, breathy sound, feverish gibberish, when Yugi turned his cheek into the sheets and curled his fingers for purchase. He inhaled, mewled, and his tongue appeared unsure at the syllables it was attempting.

"_Hmm_…" Yami was arched over him, seemed to be drawing pleasure from Yugi's pleasure almost via osmosis, taunt as a bow.

"Ah!" Yugi hiccupped. As the sensation suddenly layer, his body coiling with a spasm, when Yami's mind brushed back into his, which was fast coming unlaced as if Pharaoh was plucking open the ribbons of some mental corset, when he tangled a third digit to thrust deep bottoming out into Yugi.

"Shh," Pharaoh's fingers escaped from tormenting Yugi's nerve endings, and stroking up the flanks of his thighs Pharaoh's hands were strong when they found the grooves of the boy's hips and drew him closer to the apex of his own thighs.

Something was strange, older, and Yugi felt bizarrely small and young and flush suddenly. He couldn't trace the vein of the feeling but Pharaoh had changed to peel back some other layer. They were reaching the core of this, the mind link was flared almost back to life and very soon Yugi sensed Yami would see everything he had sequestered behind his defences. It was like breaking a dam, they'd flood and mingle, Yugi could feel it coming and Pharaoh wanted it while he lingered on the edge of trepidation.

Yami kissed him out of a thought, tugged him back into fever with burning lips from the antiseptic quiet of Yugi's private mind and tongue dipping into Yugi's mouth strung them both to purr. Leaning up into the kiss Yugi was vaguely aware of Pharaoh brushing the tip of his arousal along his entrance. Steadily Pharaoh built the pressure, Yugi felt himself restrict tensely and then at the coaxing press against his nerves, unable to hold himself, he gave in instinctively.

"_O-oh_…" The initial gasp fell into something of moan? Groan? Ache? It didn't hurt when the head parted him, entered, but it was immediately too much without there being any real sharp pain.

He strained a little to accommodate Pharaoh, to relax, as hands fast round his hips, thumbs in the grooves, Pharaoh refused to still. It was slow, insistent, burying a sword to the hilt refusing to stop but able only to inch, crawling, inside him. Yugi forgot how to breathe.

"Ah!" He gasped.

There was a pinprick, a needle through the surface of the skin, inside Yugi's mind. The membrane between he and Pharaoh, what was left of his mental wall, was breached and at once Yami's conscious came flooding to mingle with his.

Yugi's back arched, a plucked string, hands scraping above his head to push into the wall and more against Yami. The Pharaoh moaned and shaking Yugi found himself unable to stop the hiccupping mewls he made on every inhale because very suddenly his pleasure was doubled with Yami's own. It was nearly as if he could see both sides of the mirror, feel how tight he was round Pharaoh's arousal as it bottomed out totally inside him to the hilt, and clawing at the wall Yami was _everywhere_. Under his skin, in his mind, in his heart and Yugi knew he was rushing back into the Pharaoh when he moaned thickly, soaking up the satisfaction and total domination with which he had Yugi under him.

_Mou Hitori No Boku!_

It rippled out of Yugi's mind on reflex. Not a scream but a moan bubbling out of his throat to couple with it. _Yesyesyes_. He wasn't sure what Yami could perceive but at that thought, he felt the other's mind and knew Yami heard _everything_. The name, those old words Yugi hadn't used for so long, felt perfectly right now. Puzzle piece back in place.

Pharaoh-

_Mou Hitori no Boku_, he corrected softly in prompt, nipping at Yugi's jaw.

Yugi folded, turned towards those lips and would've whimpered if they hadn't immediately sealed on his. The other seemed to want to test it, crash them more enfolded, and bucked a little hips rocking into Yugi without ever really thrusting. There were splinters of physical and mental pleasure from all directions. Yami's thoughts, his desires, his pleasure, mingled with Yugi's own. _Perfect_. Yugi fractured. Felt a rush low in his pelvis of being utterly, fathomlessly, safe and adored.

The Spirit of the Puzzle, Yami seemed to like that old title just as dearly given how he coaxed it from Yugi, squeezed his hips as Yugi's fingers peeled up his arched back and withdrawing half an inch thrust back slowly into the captured boy. _Oh_. Yugi's knees tightened round him, fingers flexed, and his mind fell back into shambles. _Yes_. This was perfect, _so good_, Yami could have him then. Forever! However! If it felt like this to surrender. Yugi folded, submitted and Yami's hips asserted themselves more fully in reward accentuating the tease of skin on skin contrasted with the fullness, totality, of being one. He seemed to prove his point.

The nasty things in Yugi: the resentment, the anger, the bitterness and doubt and fear… seemed to be weeds and somehow Yami ripped them up to crumble back to their foundations and sneak back to his side of the ocean. They were qualities of hate, darkness, things the Spirit retrieved for himself and with them gone Yugi felt himself lighten, unfold, old spark refilling sacred and sudden like spring had hit. Yami peppered his cheeks with kisses, tangled Yugi up, stole him and locked the boy back up under his own protection. Yugi moaned rising his hips to meet the tangible slap of Yami's against him, _inside_ him.

He was totally possessed again. Yugi had lost this one. Yami won, greed won, but it felt _so_ good to give up. Yami took back the weapons, gave Yugi back his toys and his happiness and in having Yugi's image returned to what it should be the Spirit surged with possessive desire for him. When Yugi became softer, gentler, pliant Pharaoh instantly wanted him impossibly more.

Yami was back to a presence in his mind, dark, but overlapped with that Yugi could feel his body pressed impossibly hot, ruddy and physical. Thick, hot, slick Pharaoh pivoted his hips slowly, tense on his knees and elbows as Yugi's fingers felt the strength of the muscles under the thinly spread skin. Yami could've taken Yugi harder but when he paused inside the boy at the end of each purposeful, sticky, motion it was somehow fuller in how it conquered and possessed.

_That's it. Let me take you_. Was that his thought or Yami's? They seemed synced but Yugi's colours were different. Must have been Yami…

He was forgetting how to breathe. His heart was drumming. Weak and claimed. Yami's arousal, his languid invading thrust, throbbing and melting and stretching made Yugi think he was going to unravel entirely to goo. Yami jerked, found a firmer rhythm, and Yugi matched the tempo without much choice. He could feel how raw, savage, the Spirit was with victory and worship. Yami was lost in his own pleasure, in Yugi's pleasure, in the tight plush of Yugi's willing body to last much more of the torture. This was what he'd wanted: oneness completed, merged, till Yugi was moaning his name and willingly spread _his_.

_Yesyesyes_.

Yami chuckled, breathless, half panting and nearly giddy. Yugi may as well have been consumed, eaten alive, letting himself be shackled. Wrong, so wrong, but yet with it came a total certainty and order beyond human simplicity. The puzzle, the magic, their souls, the mind link that wasn't going anywhere, Yami who wasn't going anywhere… Yugi could give into it, the voodoo witchcraft of black magic, for his own bloody kind of curse. _Goddontstop_.

Yami whispered, sewing them, against Yugi's ear to let the boy fully taste the rumble of the baritone that was cutting.

"No one can ever have you like this. No one else can ever be one with you. You're mine," Pharaoh asserted, rolling his hips between Yugi's thighs as he held the boy down. "I'm sorry for that Yugi. I know I need you more than you need me but the only consolation I can offer is to promise you that: you will have the happiest life the universe can afford. No one will ever love you more than I do and no one will _ever_ hurt you because I will _destroy_ them."

Yami sealed it, officially, set the conditions of Yugi's paradise-imprisonment and nodding, breathless, he didn't dare bother to argue.

"_Mou Hitori_…" he lost it, purring, aching. _Yes_.

Yugi got it, he understood, this needed to be if he was ever to know any kind of peace or else Yami would hunt and haunt forever. His assent too, the contract of it, and how Yugi pushed up into Yami's body with it gave the old darkness there plenty of gobble for itself.

"A-ngh-ah!" It was a choked, soft, brittle little sound Yugi mangled as his calf buckled in and he hit his breaking point rapturously.

Yami held him through the spasms, purred, thrust hard once then continuously at a sickly-sweetly soft pace ridding his own orgasm and extending it by savouring the feel of the boy contracting and flexing round him milking his seed. What an old thought, a novel idea, '_seed_' was and Yugi fluttered half convinced it had come from the darker caverns of Yami's abyss of a mind wrapping round Yugi's.

There was quiet, Yugi was butter, the thrum in his head had evaporated to a tingle and his body seemed wracked free of all pains, aches, to a heady, warm, gooey glow he used to associate with putting on the puzzle after removing it to shower. It was as if, slapped back round, he'd been healed. He felt like _Yugi_ again. All good.

Yami panted, leant into his hands, forehead on Yugi's clavicle reminiscence of a hunched lion while Yugi sprawled limp. Their minds, hearts, souls and bodies smashed back together there was blissful, radiant, peace. Yugi could feel the double edge of that sword, the danger of what he'd just signed to in his deal with the devil but didn't care. He'd made that deal _years_ ago. Trying to weasel out of it these past few months had achieved nothing. With Pharaoh back inside him, no secrets, he was freer somehow and everything was set pristine like glass. Yugi didn't feel as if he was wading through wet cement anymore. Yami would fix, Yami would bend and mend and face anything to make everything right. Yugi was devoid of concern.

The Spirit let him soak in those thoughts, examining each note from Yugi like it was something made of glass, something precious, before putting it back down in the boy's mind without tampering. He kissed Yugi's clavicle, seemed to encourage the train of thought, let his own greed be the corner stone to trust.

Yugi squirmed, thighs flexing, and felt, befuddled with bed warmth, the peculiar new sensation of Yami hardening within him.

"Hmm," he pushed his fingers against the Pharaoh's shoulder and hushing him gently Yami's hands stroked his hips to tempt them up a little.

"That's it," he purred, "relax…"

"_Mou Hitori no Boku…?_" Yugi whispered weakly.

Yami purred, low ripple of baritone into a sigh, and began flexing his hips back into a teasingly slow, delicate, rhythm. Over sensitive and boneless, weightless, Yugi hardly had any strength to struggle and couldn't fathom how Yami could want him again already let alone find the will to actually take him.

"Mine," he sighed, "beautiful _Mou Hitori no Ore_."

Yugi quirked, laughed a hair, and nearly cooed into the forgotten pseudonym.

"_Aibou,_" Yami murmured just as softly creeping up to extend his arc, hips rocking, as he pressed his lips at the shell of Yugi's ear and scrapped to bury his face into the junction of the boy's jaw. "_Hikari_."

Yugi hadn't heard Yami use that one before but where _Aibou _caused him to shudder in nostalgic bliss _Hikari_ made his toes curl shyly. Pretty words that formed little prayers of adoration as Yami tasted the thrill of being able to take Yugi how he wanted, like he wanted, when he wanted a second time in only so many moments.

Yugi drifted, anchored at port only by Yami, too tired to be any more frazzled but to lay back and let the other wring a tiny bit more pleasure out of him. It felt good to have Yami flex, move, inside him through the heartbeats but he was still giddy when with a quiet shudder the Pharaoh filled him with heat a second time. Yami's shoulders slumped, finally medicated, and Yugi himself felt drugged when the other rather delicately untangled them and collapse back onto the mattress beside him.

Yugi's mind fluttered he wanted Yami to hold him but-

Pharaoh kissed his temple, before Yugi could finish the thought, and catching the end of the image Yami grunted pushing himself off the bed. He traipsed, deliciously naked and stunningly handsome for someone so transfixed on Yugi, and putting his elbow into it Yami pushed up the bottom panel of the window to let midday air flood the stagnant room.

Yugi cooed, curled to his side, the last pieces of tension dripping out of his spine as he felt the shadow magic peel back from its lockdown to open the house back, reconnect it, with the rest of the world. Detoxed Yugi was relatively clingy when Yami tangled up, all legs, with him and kissed his forehead.

Yugi's arm folded up Yami's back, sagging to sprawl across his hip, and the Spirit traced curves up his spine.

"Love you," Yugi mumbled brainlessly, off with the fairies.

It came wafting up from some back channel of his mind and like a key into a lock made the Spirit of the Puzzle glow desperately. Yami had kept his promise, won the game, won the trust, exorcised the house's shadow magic from lockdown so they could come and go freely so he was rewarded.

Yugi burrowed against his clavicle and could see, taste, the plots checking off in Yami's never ending regal mind. It was commander's logic jumping from one battle to a next with a keen focus upon Yugi. Pharaoh wanted to bathe them, feed him, and clean him up because he could feel the aches in Yugi and sense how the boy had nearly starved himself with anxiety. Yami held him closer stroking his back and tried to keep his grip lax as if Yugi might scare or break.

"Hm," Yugi whispered, snuggling down. "I want to go to Ryou's."

Yami baulked on the interior, like a startled cat, started to clamp like a vice and Yugi nuzzled him as the darkness wrapped round him so close Yugi couldn't even feel cold in his nudity.

"He's going to be worried," Yugi muttered to elaborate, "and if you want me not to leave you've got to be reasonable."

He tried to appeal, let Yami riffled through his thoughts, tried to make it clear the need here: to be free to move on his leash, mutual trust, security that came from knowing Yami wouldn't hamper him from flourishing… The Pharaoh retracted a little, sighed, and Yugi could see the political strain of negotiation forming in the other's mind when Yami knew he was right.

"Take a bath first?" Yami appealed gently, hopefully, but still adamant inside. "It's not even noon."

"After I call him," Yugi nodded.

"Take a cab there and home?" The other added, tentatively pushing, and when Yugi seemed to scoff internally added. "It's a long walk."

"Okay," he consented in forfeit, Yami had a decent point and he was going to be aching from all that use, love making, they'd just committed. Yugi remarked to himself how funny the adjectives he used still were but let it pass like a bottle floating out to sea.

"Have a big meal, relax, spoil yourself." Yami pleaded hand tracing the bones of Yugi's flank. "Text me?"

"Heh," Yugi smiled a little, "okay."

He almost offered to take the Pharaoh with him but they both quelled that though together without speaking. Yami wouldn't be welcomed or trusted in Ryou's home right now. He did himself more favours, endeared himself more to the pale schoolmate, if he didn't breathe down Yugi's neck. If he let Yugi go and come back he endeared himself to Yugi.

"Can I have you all day tomorrow?" Yami suggested. "When you get home."

"Yeah," Yugi nestled, rubbing up into him like a cat and the Spirit of the Puzzle, possessive, quite crooned at it when he did lavishing Yugi mentally and physically with kisses. "I can do homework with Ryou, it'll be easier together, and curl up with you tomorrow."

"Okay," Pharaoh liked that, he couldn't express it vocally very well but having Yugi draw up his knees and suggest such things as simple as spending a day letting the Spirit fawn over him was a shudder of pleasure.

Yugi got the impression he'd spend the greater part of tomorrow locked in Yami's lap protectively, spoilt, and no doubt fondled all of which Pharaoh didn't deny. _Wouldn't _deny really considering how bashful he was _not_ about the whole affair. Pharaoh would make no apologies apparently for wanting him. _Needing _him, he stressed to Yugi over the mind link, and the boy had to consider how much of tomorrow he'd spend toying with or being toyed with or with the Pharaoh in his mouth or…

Oh now who thought of _that?_

Yami wasn't owning up to it, neither was Yugi, it seemed to be unanimously both their faults and if they were sharing blame with a little smirk the Spirit suggested he wouldn't quite mind _that_ outcome. Yugi snorted lightly, shimmed out of Pharaoh's arms and sat groggily. Still laying Yami's hand stroked the small of his back. As Yugi tried to find the strength to rouse fully Yami rather forced himself to follow and pressed his lips dotingly to the supple patch of Yugi's bare upper arm.

So they had an accord settled then: Yugi's compliance for Yami's docility. The boy decided it would have to be an even trade. It meant no girlfriends, or boyfriends, meant only Pharaoh as the Spirit had so clearly professed. It meant no household all Yugi's own. It offered security, nearly perfect romance and loyalty or fealty and as Yami stroked his arms Yugi knew he had a prize. Anzu would be jealous. He could've done worse to entangle himself. Given a few more days he'd forget all this entirely for Yami's lavish better qualities and how the other tangled them together with so much talent. Yugi could still have relatively the same life he dreamed of, really, what adventure would Yami dare hold him back from?

If this was the cost of peace Yugi would face it. If this was the face of love Yugi would have to embrace it. _Mou Hitori no Boku_ would always refuse to let him go.

Yami kissed his plush cheek.

* * *

1 That was a massive lemon I think it's safe to say.  
2 '_Hikari_' in my experience is more a fanon term than an actual canon term which is why Yugi's rather surprised to hear Yami use it for the first time. In the anime Yami talks about his _'Partner/Other Self_', Yami Bakura talks about his '_Land Lord/Host'_ and Yami Marik prefers to call Marik his '_Weaker Half'_ (which is kind of a _dick_ move really).  
3 sort of a semi-dark ending eh?

Sending you all lots of love!


End file.
